csrejects

foodise

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Inspiration

The rising food waste is ever pressing in Singapore, amounting to 12% of local waste production. In efforts to combat this we sought a means to bring a greater incentive behind reducing food wastage, by providing for those in need. Through foodise, we promote the convenience and simplicity of food-sharing to connect the food surplus with its demand.

What it does

foodise is a website that allows donors to put up their excess food for donation on the marketplace, be it individuals or corporations. Beneficiaries that require food can access the website and scour for food listings that are able to match their dietary requirements as well as their proximity to the food. Thereafter, they can reserve the food in the listing through the website. After placing a reservation on the listing, the donor will be able to access the beneficiary’s information and arrange for collection from the donor.

How we built it

The frontend homepage and marketplace is built with React.JS and is stylised with Atomise UI. Clerk.dev provides for authentication and user management of the marketplace.

Axios was used to send HTTP requests from the frontend to the backend, which is then handled with Express.JS and mongoose. Data from the listings are collected and stored in MongoDB which is hosted on Amazon Web Services.

The frontend is hosted by Vercel while the backend is hosted by Heroku

Challenges we ran into

Some of the harder challenges we faced stemmed from connecting the frontend web page to the backend database, through Express.SJ and Mongoose. Noting our lack of expertise and time-constraints faced during the hackathon, it presented many challenges with creating a robust and intuitive system to seamlessly connect frontend to backend.

Furthermore, limited access to full functionality of applications and services used posed limitations in our ability to further develop the backend database to hold much larger amounts of data in a more intuitive fashion. We realised that we had to manage our expectations in delivering a more cost-effective and simplistic design for foodise.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a full stack within such a short timeline of 24 hours is definitely worth noting. In these 24 hours, we have gained technical knowledge of both frontend and backend in a pace that drives us beyond our comfort zones.

We are beginners in the field of web development and the journey towards foodise has not been an easy one. With the knowledge gained from LifeHack, we believe we can do more than what we could before the Hackathon.

What we learned

We learned the different aspects of frontend and backend development and the hard work that a developer needs to put in in order to make a website appealing to a potential customer as well as having to link between the website and the database. The seemingly simple and easy clicks that we perform everyday as users actually require extensive coding and work to ensure that all of our inputs are recorded and stored and that the website would run as desired.

What's next for csrejects

We hope to bring this project further and connect with needy families on the ground as well as businesses to make our website a reality and benefit those who struggle to put food on their plates daily. We also hope to participate in more such hackathons in order to gain more experience and learn from like-minded individuals.

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