What's Cookin?

Version Releases

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.umddining.whats_cookin

Version Demo: https://youtube.com/shorts/8Js__TX1WnE?feature=share
Version Release 0.5: https://youtu.be/dI9YwqjOn6E

Inspiration

We were inspired to attempt to tackle this problem as it was something we wish existed within UMD. The technology we wanted to use was inspired by a workshop that Vaibhav and Navid had the honor of hosting during bitcamp, “Introduction to flutter.” After the workshop they held we all were interested and curious to bring our newfound knowledge of flutter to life. Aiming to create a tangible project that we saw could be an assist during our time here at UMD.

With that said this is a very personal project to us. Vaibhav, being a vegetarian, Alex having a seafood allergy, and myself being gluten-free, having the luxury to eat whatever wherever is not an option. So, we set out to try and solve something that would impact us and presumably others with food restrictions/diets.

What it does

This is a mobile application that displays the daily updated menu (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner) for the current 3 UMD dining halls around campus (South diner, The Diner, and 251 North). Each diner traditionally has its own daily menu which varies from diner to diner. Users may filter to their diner of preference and see a live update of the menu. Furthermore, the functionality that we wanted to highlight is its versatility in being able to filter diner menu options for people with dietary restrictions. We found that many times (from personal experience) the trip made to the dining hall was not worth it as the limited selection of food items available to our diets was not worth the trip. Thus, we aimed to tackle the challenge of being able to keep terps connected and updated in a compact and reliable way as to what food was available to them. And what better way to do this than a mobile app.

How we built it

We used flutter to build the mobile front end of the application. Then, we used the Cockroach Database supported by Google Cloud to store meal data that was taken from the UMD dining menu website. Then we queried the database with SQL from within the app and displayed it. The app also provides filters to specify which types of food one is seeking.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a major optimization issue where we were parsing too many strings coming in which was damaging our time complexity. This was one of the biggest challenges we had to overcome, as we had to find a way to work around optimizing the data provided by the cockroachDB and the UMD website. We were able to overcome this issue.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Honestly, we are very proud of ourselves for sticking through and working hard throughout the hackathon. We think one of the biggest obstacles was working in an unfamiliar environment and still being able to work together and submit.

What we learned

The importance of working together. We think that without one another we would have not gotten as far as we did (submit day). Everyone was there for one another, whether someone needed a break, help, or just needed to talk. We also were very happy throughout this as we were surrounded by people who were passionate to learn but also brought the mood up.

What's next for What's Cookin?

We plan to optimize and refine our app so the link between title and our scraper is as efficient as possible. This way we can update and make the app even more practical with functionality that we really wanted to dedicate time to. We would love to see this be an asset to the community. We plan to launch this app in the play store by April 17th. And we hope others will find use for it just like we will.