Inspiration
As a group of 4 rookie hackers, we wanted to create a platform which would allow users to meet complementary personalities to their own liking. We had all taken personality tests such as the Enneagram and Meyer's Briggs Type Indicator and had used those characteristic to learn more about ourselves, and thought it would be interesting to create a socialization app focused around personality, rather than looks or interests.
What it does
A user can create their profile and upload their personality test results, matching them with compatible types in their location.
How we built it
We built the database using AWS RDS in mySQL, and used an AWS EC2 instance running a PHP webserver in order to handle the dataflow, and an application made in Android Studio. The java application would ping the webserver for data.
Challenges we ran into
Due to our inexperience, mySQL was initially very difficult to set-up and apply onto the server. We also are not very experienced in the field of webservers, which caused setting up the PHP webserver on the EC2 virtual machine via PuTTY to be very tedious and time-consuming, but eventually worked. The main challenge we faced was that of connecting the java application to the mySQL database through the PHP webserver. As mySQL is not natively supported by Java, we had to import libraries which proved to be incredibly difficult and left a roadblock, as we couldn't write or read data from the database.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
As a group, we got pushed out of our comfort zone and were forced to deal with many frustrating difficulties, but all-in-all learned a great deal about AWS and PHP. From this, we're proud that we could create a EC2 instance and host a webserver on a Linux server.
What we learned
We learned how to create, edit, and manage a mySQL database, and upload it to a server, while not able to control it from an application, still a strong introduction to databases and network storage. We also were exposed to AWS EC2 instances and PHP programming. We also worked with the Java library JDBC, which allows for network data connections and using mySQL databases in our application. This was by far the most challenging task, and we have yet to resolve all of the issues. On the front-end side, we learned how to integrate XML files to create a user interface.
What's next for EnneagramR
We do plan on coming back and attempting to restructure the way the project is organized in order to finish the application, as we think it is a unique idea.
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