Inspiration
The project was conceived because of my interest in books. Books are a vessel through which the author activates your imagination and helps you construct a vivid world. I like to read under different circumstances and I would like to find new books based off of criteria other than the rigid categories that exist. Also, I would like to have something that helps me decide on a engaging book since I have a limited amount of many.
What it does
The app gives you suggestions to choose from books based on the answers given it. These suggestions are predicated on questions that will give better insights into your interests and grabs your attention. It would provide images of locations some cultural background and some interesting passages that would entice you to read the book. Also, the way that a book would be chosen would take int account things like an area you are interested and data such as the kinds of weather and the geography would be factored in.
How we built it
It was intended to be a mobile app because it is fast and convenient to browse things on your phone. Redux was used to get data from one screen and use it in another - it was a fortuitous solution to a bothersome problem. Flask and python was utilized because it is easy to implement, widely used, and would cover my bases in terms of handling a tricky API. In terms of styling the frontend tailwind was used because it helps to have tried and tested ways of styling something.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge was the limited amount of time to get things done. In addition, I needed to work on the frontend and backend for which I had no gauge of the task. Therefore, I worked on a weather API by happenstance and not a book API, which would be the first to be integrated into the project if I had properly planned and prioritized the tasks. Also, I’m not familiar with APIs, React Native or anything backend related. So most of the project contains ersatz solutions, but also a chance for improvement.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud that I tackled the backend, even though I got completely lost because of the number of APIs and their requirements to access them. Basically, I went through different ones until I got something to work. It is gratifying when I made a call to the API and the data appeared in the frontend.
What we learned
I learned that it is important to budget your time efficiently because implementing ideas takes a lot of time. Also, debugging and adjusting your approach to a problem is non sine qua to having working code. Working on the backend and being able to make it work is equally as gratifying as being able to make something appear on screen. I would also probably decide on a project idea before coding anything in. the future.
What's next for Book Odyssey
In the future, I would like it to have an actual backend and a frontend that is user-friendly. Concocting algorithms that takes into account all the information to suggest intriguing books would be ideal.
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