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UTopia Website
Inspiration
The inspiration behind UTopia stems from the desire to create a more connected and vibrant campus experience at the University of Toronto. We noticed that students, faculty, and visitors often miss out on events happening around them simply because they aren't aware of them or don't have an easy way to find out. With UTopia, we aimed to bridge this gap by providing a platform that allows users to effortlessly discover events based on their location, making it easier to engage with the university community and foster a more active and inclusive campus culture.
What it does
UTopia is a dynamic platform that shows all the events happening around the University of Toronto, tailored to your location. By utilizing real-time location data, it displays nearby events on a map, allowing users to explore activities, workshops, lectures, and social gatherings happening across campus. Whether you're looking for academic events, social meetups, or recreational activities, UTopia helps you stay informed and connected with the vibrant campus community.
How we built it
We built UTopia by combining several powerful technologies to create a seamless experience for users. For the front end, we used React.js, allowing us to build an interactive, user-friendly interface that displays events in real-time on a map. The map dynamically updates based on the user's location, showing nearby events with markers for easy navigation. For the backend, we used Python with Flask to host the application and handle requests.
The event data is stored in DynamoDB, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) NoSQL database. DynamoDB efficiently stores and retrieves event information, including event names, times, and locations, which are displayed on the front end.
Challenges we ran into
One of the key challenges we encountered during the development of UTopia was integrating DynamoDB with the front-end React application.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We got the react front end to work, and utilized Java Open Street Map (JOSM) to show that map of all the entire university. Also, we were able to create a personal profile page that will tailor events familiar to them.
What we learned
Throughout the development of UTopia, we learned a great deal about using DynamoDB and React to make the project work smoothly. On the front-end side, we gained a deeper understanding of React.js. React allowed us to build a highly interactive and dynamic user interface.
What's next for UTopia
The next step in the development of UTopia is to fully integrate DynamoDB with the front end to display event details alongside the map markers. Currently, the map shows event markers, but we need to enhance the user experience by displaying additional information, such as the event name, type, and maximum capacity, beside each marker.
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