TerpStudy

Inspiration

This project is inspired by our own personal problems when trying to find and reserve a study spot on campus. The reservation process is hidden deep within the UMD Libraries website which makes it difficult to find a study spot. Moreover to reserve a study spot requires your name, UID, and email address which makes the process a hassle.

What it does

TerpStudy is designed to simplify the process by giving you a list of available study spots in the STEM and Mckeldin libraries for the day and with a click of a button, it reserves the spot for you.

How we built it

The front end and functionality of the website were done using HTML/CSS and Javascript whereas we communicated with UMD libraries API using NodeJS to handle reserving study spots. We used MySQL to create our database to store the user's name, UID, email, and corresponding IP address.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we faced was coordinating our code because we were all mostly new to GitHub. Given how GitHub isn't as user-friendly it made it difficult to navigate through through the variety of tools GitHub has to offer. Another challenge we faced was integrating our backend to the front end. Since we all worked independently from each other, we had to re-program our code to make sure we were all on the same page.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of being able to work together and communicate effectively. We are also proud of creating a working product that could be used by potential UMD students to simplify finding and reserving study spaces.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned the importance of keeping up to date with deadlines and learning to program with a multitude of languages and frameworks. We all worked with at least one language that was completely new to us before starting.

What's next for TerpStudy

We want to integrate our service with other places on campus such as the Brendan Iribe and Edward St. John buildings. That way our website would be the one-stop service for finding any study spots on campus.

Built With

• html/css
• javascript
• mysql
• node.js