Inspiration
In the show, "How I Met your Mother" Barney Stinson uses the Lemon Law (typically used for cars) for women, to see if he would want to date a girl in the first few minutes of getting to know her. In this case, he would only allow a maximum of 5 minutes to get to know the other person. Our app is based off of this 'law', where we only allocate 5 minutes for people to get to know each other on our chat platform.
What it does
After logging in to our chat service, our server will automatically put you into a random chat room. You'll wait there until there's another person for you to talk to that logs in. He/she will be randomly placed and if they end up in your room then that's awesome! You now have someone to talk to. The timer starts and you just have 5 minutes (reduced time for demo) to talk to the other person. After that, you both get kicked out with no way of contacting the other person unless you exchanged contact information within the chat. This is a speed-dating app. No awkward goodbyes, no long conversations, just a quick 5 minute talk and you're done.
How we built it
We built the server using node.js and express. We incorporated the use of socket.io to allow for interaction between the server and the client. The client was based in HTML and components that had to communicate back to the server were coded in Javascript. Styling was done using CSS and the web pages were all made using HTML, utilizing tools such as font-awesome.
Challenges we ran into
This was our first time working with Socket.io so we ran into a lot of problems making sure the 'room' system actually worked. Making sure the timer disconnected both users was also a problem we ran into which took a few hours to properly fix. Getting the 'Enter' key to submit forms and send messages was also surprisingly difficult to figure out. Even uploading the project on Heroku was a challenge because Heroku requires certain code in order for socket.io to function properly.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Actually finishing the application. The small flares of CSS on certain parts of the website. Getting socket.io to work properly with the timer function included. Allowing the user to just hit the 'ENTER' key to send messages and complete forms
What we learned
How to use Git as a team. Basics of socket.io. More knowledge of all the programming languages we used. Improved our problem solving skills.
What's next for TheLemonLaw
Increased functionality and further styling. Addition of more features such as an Emoji bar to select different emojis.
Try it Out
thelemonlaw.herokuapp.com
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.