Happy Hours

Inspiration

Lack of social interaction is one aspect of distance learning that has been particularly challenging for students. Since there is no centralized platform (that I know of) that allows for the creation and sharing of "happy hours", meetings that help students relax and connect with their peers, I decided to create one.

What it does

Happy Hours is a fully functioning web application. It allows students to create, join, sort through, and search through Happy Hours in an intuitive and user-friendly manner. It also supports light and dark themes to allow for maximum ease of use.

How I built it

I built Happy Hours with React (w/ TypeScript), Redux, Firebase, and Material UI. React provides the architecture of the application, Redux manages the state, Firebase provides a fully functioning backend and database, and Material UI provides effective styling.

Challenges I ran into

The major challenge I ran into was finishing the application within the time constraint. I had to read a lot of documentation for Redux, Material UI, and Firebase as I was trying different libraries and techniques that I hadn't used before.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud that I was not only able to finish the application to the point where it's usable but that I was also able to deploy it so that it could actually be used by students.

What I learned

I learned a lot about different Redux libraries and the pros and cons of them. Initially, I was using plain Redux, but then I switched to Redux-Toolkit which made it a lot easier to quickly write Redux reducers, actions, and selectors. I also learned a lot about domains as I was able to acquire a free domain and connect it with Firebase Hosting.

What's next for Happy Hours

More features! Some include adding a visibility option to a Happy Hour (public, private, invite-only) and adding the ability to add Happy Hours to calendars (Google, Apple, etc.).