Inspiration:
Many Vanderbilt students are from out of state, and the ability to bring a car to campus is ridiculously difficult. There are many times throughout the year when Vanderbilt students are heading to the same location, whether it be concerts, grocery shopping, or even to the airports to catch their flights. Although Vanderbilt has a group chat meant for finding rides, it is often difficult to locate messages pertaining to rides that one needs.
What did we do?
We created the website's backend using a combination of Flask, which is a Python framework, and MongoDB for the database. We implemented user login with Google Single-Sign-On (SSO) using OAuth2.0 and an email notification system with the help of mailtrap.io. For the frontend, we primarily used HTML/CSS and JavaScript with the Jinja templating engine to implement the outlook and functionality of our project.
Challenges we ran into:
We ran into issues while creating our Python virtual environment, implementing the Google SSO feature, merging our code using VSCode and Git, and creating the outlook and functionality of our project because of the lack of experience we had in those areas.
Accomplishments that we're proud of:
We are proud of the backend implementation because we were able to implement a fully functional database instead of hardcoding the data, as well as the UI of our entire project despite our lack of experience in frontend development. Next, we are proud that we were able to implement the Google SSO login to ensure the safety of Vanderbilt students, which we consider an integral part of our project. Lastly, we were able to accomplish a working notification system through email using mailtrap.io, a emailing simulation environment.
What we learned:
We learned what it takes to brainstorm, design, and implement an idea. We also learned how to delegate different tasks across all of our team members to utilize their strengths and skill set for the advancement of the project. Lastly, we acquired technical skills through learning new software, familiarizing with languages, and extensive debugging.
What's next for CarDores:
We hope to branch out to other colleges so that they may feel this same sort of safety and convenience. We also would like to enhance the cybersecurity aspect of our project with things like restricting the login domain of the website to only the university domain.
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