TOFacts - Fact checker

During a time where fake news is common place it is important to be able to distinguish fact from fiction. This website checks the validity of a claim using Google's fact check tool API.

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Inspiration

Our inspiration for the project was all of the fake news since the COVID-19 pandemic. Our program would enable users to obtain concrete facts rather than common lies to hopefully put them at ease in these troubling times.

What it does

The website consists of a search bar where the user inputs a statement to fact check. The website then returns an article with information pertaining to the input statement and whether or not the claim is valid using Google's fact check tool API.

How I built it

The website is hosted on Netlify with its own custom domain from domain.com. The website works the user inputs and the fact they want to be checked and the website then sends the queue to the API. The API processes the request and returns a JSON file to the website which is then parsed for useful information and then displayed to the user.

Challenges I ran into

Some of the challenges that we encountered during this build are that coming into this build none of us had any experience with APIs, javascript or Webhosting. This enabled us to learn many new things about how these systems worked and integrated together. This allowed us to learn many things and in the end create a successful website linked to Google's fact check tool API.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Were all proud of creating a working website that is hosted on our custom domain. We were able to successfully send a and receive request from the API and parse the JSON file returned. Before we started we had little to no experience on the topic and in the end through many hours or research and persevering through challenges enabled us to complete the website you see today.

What I learned

This project enabled us to learn more about web development, web hosting, domains, and APIs. As most of us came from little to no experience in web development this project enabled us to obtain a much deeper understanding of all these systems and how they integrate together.

What's next for TOhacks - Fact checker

Some of the next steps for this program would be to add additional articles rather than just one and create a more robust website with additional features. Also adding more robust features to improve usability such as more error checking ensuring that the claims displayed correctly. Another feature we should add is more communication with the user for example if there are no results display that there are not results to the user. We could add more article displayed in order to have additional sources proving the fact thus improving credibility

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