T226, Gather

Inspiration

-The idea came from some international student friends at UCLA. When they come to a new country alone, their first priority is surviving and setting themselves up for success in an unfamiliar environment. Then they tend to seek a sense of community and familiarity with people they identify with. Gather is based on the similar idea that we could all use a little more human element in our lives, It's said that people who share your values keep you true to your roots while pushing you to be better. We would love to help you meet these people and undertake new experiences with them.

What it does

-Gather smartly matches people who share the same interests by location, then expands on that by suggesting local businesses and activities they might like.to explore together.

How we built it

We built our back end on top of Java Spring MVC which communicates via our RESTful API with an iOS app on the front-end. We also used Microsoft Azure to host Ubuntu on a shared server with our MySQL and MongoDB instances safely tucked away within Docker containers. Naturally, we can be accessed at a .co domain. ;)

Challenges we ran into

Getting an Ubuntu instance up on Azure with our databases in docker containers
Tackling a geospatial query to find other users in the area
Incorporating and adapting Yelp's merciless search API
Developing a discrete front and back end in parallel. Then bringing them together and making them play nice.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Stayed up a lot because we wanted to make something--then we made it
Used Spring MVC for the first time and Java for the second time--and had no problem contributing
Persisted when things were unclear and succeeded in finishing because of it