The NecessCity

Locate the bare necessities around your community for people in need!

Comment

Table number 8A/B

Inspiration

When we think of social good we want to include people in different situations helping each other. It can be difficult for lower income families to find free resources they need to survive, especially in our cold winters. We don’t know of any centralized hubs that provide resources for all survival needs. We hope to make it easier for anyone who needs help.

What it does

Website map interface that tells the user of local necessities around their community (ie, food). A way for communities to come together and provide resources to lower income community members. Website interface was chosen so that it does not require a phone to access (ie a public library computer would suffice), but could easily be expanded to an app

How we built it

  1. Manually searched for food shelter buildings in Minneapolis, gathered contact and location data
  2. Formatted all information into CSV file, which turned into XML file using Excel
  3. A Javascript program parses the XML file into different elements of food shelters
  4. HTML program connects to Google Maps Javascript API
  5. HTML program calls the Javascript program and marks on Google maps the location of food shelters
  6. Webpage based off HTML program is designed using CSS and based off a template

Challenges we ran into

  1. Where to contain/query the building information from. First used MongoDB but we did not have enough experience to query it fluently. Although we managed to add buildings into it! :)

  2. Parsing an XML file using HTML/Javascript. Our scripts cannot make connection with the XML file (Cross-Origin request error) because the connection was unsecure. We spent a lot of time trying out the COR request method, and hosting the program through a server.

  3. Learning HTML/Javascript - they are new for all team members.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  1. Learning HTML/Javascript! :D
  2. Learning localhost can combine files - it took us forever to figure out haha
  3. Coming up with a plan and blueprint within the first 30 minutes of the hackathon
  4. Finding resources in the community that can be used
  5. Navigating the XML file through Javascript..finally!

What we learned

  1. More general knowledge of programming languages and skills
  2. Better GitHub practices/uses
  3. More exposure to full-stack development - pretty neat stuff I tell you
  4. Integration of Google Maps API

What's next for The NecessCity

  1. More types of necessities (shelters, restrooms including gender neutral, water supplies, directions to destination)
  2. Icons have different colors and users can select/toggle desired necessities
  3. Include areas beyond Minneapolis
  4. Allow for submissions of new locations into database
  5. Have client side (searching for resources) and provider side ("we need volunteers!")
  6. Mobile app
  7. Deploy onto cloud
Share this project:

Updates