Inspiration
We have grown tired of the constant and nagging checking of the availability of our college courses. Most apps on the app store only allow you to watch one course at a time, so, we decided it would make more sense for us to just make a class opening monitor on our own!
What it does
This desktop application allows the user to see all the currently available courses that can be taken here on the UTD campus. From there, they can add their phone number and opt in to receive text messages with information regarding their preferred classes.
How we built it
We mainly used C# for the development of this desktop Windows-Forms application. A database was created using MongoDB to store the data on each individual course set at UTD. Likewise, the database stores user phone numbers and saves their selected classes for their next semester. A python script is also present for the scraping of website data. It gets the data directly from UTD's coursebook website.
Challenges we ran into
Setting up the web scraper and the database proved to be some very difficult work. The MongoDB had several learning curves, though the documentation was helpful. We attempted to use UiPath for our website scraper, but that ended up being a miss. Also, we had to come up with how we were going to run a python script alongside with a C# application. We ended up creating a .exe from the python file and executed it from the main C# code.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're glad that we were able to successfully implement and create an application that utilizes a database, a website scraper, and has an overall useful function. It makes it easy for us to navigate coursebook without the excruciating load times.
What we learned
The database itself taught all of us a great deal. Data-scraping seemed a bit arbitrary and tedious, though we worked through it. The python script required several external libraries in order to perform the scraping efficiently.
What's next for UTD Class Availability
We are planning on continuing work on our UTD Class Availability application in our spare time. We think it has the potential to help many people with their college semester planning in the future. We'd like to see it in action doing what it was intended to do.
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