TrackTC

Web Data for TTC alerts from which we extracted information
front end page: 1
front end page: 2 auto-filling login menu
sample automated email to user

Inspiration

Commuter students wont be able to be aware of possible ttc delays or cancelation due to different reasons. For some people, it is a challenge to regularly check media and internet, and this could potentially lead to them not noticing the closure. At various points in time, members of our team have been late to examinations or other important events due to unknown commute interreferences.

What it does

How to use TrackTC?

Don’t be late: check out the current and planned TTC delays, provided by the TTC API.
Track your buses: enter your email and buses/trains and we will email you their delay status every 12 hours!

How we built it

We utilized React.js for frontend and Django for backend. Our selection was based on every member's prior experience with the tool. Django was used to communicate the database, obtaining the JSON from the TTC (API), and ultimately passing it to frontend (React.js).

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into include the following:

The biggest was: React and Django's compatibility issue; we had issues with connecting React, especially loading components inside App.js. We then realized that it was due to how we structured the Django react stack; the origin was set to the main.js file from different folder.
In addition we experienced different git merge errors due pycache, and we realized that it was due to us using different users.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the fact that we not only finished frontend, but backend aspect of programming, by dividing the team into two subteams. We are also proud that we spent entire night, until 11am, trying to figure out major and minor errors, together as a team. We all thought that we put the most amount of efforts as we possibly could. In a more technical point of view, we are proud of our email automation system, to notify all the users in the database, effective json parsing, and clean user interface which could attract users.

What we learned

Our team learned a lot about backend and fullstack development. Especially when most of the members had no prior experience to fullstack development.

What's next for TrackTC

Account System so people can edit their preference more conveniently. Potentially confirmation email to prevent people signing in other users without consents. Password confirmation system which could increase the user's security.