Inspiration
As hungry students at Oregon State University, we wanted a way to easily find which restaurants were open, when they were open, and how the food was. Introducing BeaverEats, a crowdsourced review website for places to eat at Oregon State University!
What it does
BeaverEats is a full-stack website for discovering the hottest dining spots on OSU's campus. From dining hall restaurants to cozy cafes and markets, we've curated a comprehensive list of all the best places to get food. Students, faculty, and staff can easily explore the map of eateries and contribute reviews, sharing their favorite dishes, ambiances, and overall experiences.
How we built it
For the frontend, we used React and TailwindCSS to create a beautiful, dynamic interface. Dedicated navigation and intuitive popups facilitates smooth user experience. To finish it off, we utilized the Google Map API to integrate an interactive map to visually explore the campus.
For the backend, we built a JVM service using Kotlin and the Ktor framework. The Google OAuth API was used to login users and authenticate their sessions so they can leave reviews. We also used MongoDB to efficiently store reviews and other information. All of this was then deployed to the Google Cloud App Engine Platform to allow us to quickly scale our services up and down.
Challenges we ran into
One challenge that we ran into was sharing React states between components. We had a lot of components with a lot of dependent interconnectivity nested between them. When we tried to synchronize and propagate state changes, it did not immediately work, and we had to reiterate our approach.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
For the frontend, we used React and TailwindCSS to create a beautiful, dynamic interface. Dedicated navigation and intuitive popups facilitates smooth user experience. To finish it off, we utilized the Google Map API to integrate an interactive map to visually explore the campus.
What we learned
One thing we learned was how to use the Google Map API. Another thing we learned was React and TailwindCSS, as two of our team members were not familiar with them before. We also learned how to use the Google Cloud Platform to deploy our website.
What's next for BeaverEats
In the future, we hope to create a better and more responsive user experience for mobile devices. We also hope to implement a moderation system for the reviews.
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