SeedBase

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Inspiration

We have talked to a handful of local farmers, and they all have agreed that a tool that would compile different seed catalogs to one source would be very helpful. This would especially help small farmers looking to quickly find a different variety of plants to farm.

What it does

It pulls data from different seed catalogs from different sites and allows the user to sort and compare different prices of a particular seed.

How we built it

We used React to build the front end of the site, and Firebase for data basing and hosting. We also used python using a library called beautiful-soup to web scrape different seed catalogs.

Challenges we ran into

Web scraping deemed to be a harder challenge than we thought. Every catalog structures their information differently, and so we needed to create a different script for different websites. For most of our team, this is the first time we have used these libraries, so it was definitely a challenge to learn as we go.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Learning how to use React and Firebase was definitely valuable for experience. We are also really proud of the UI of the app.

What we learned

We have learned a lot about farming culture in general after talking to many of the mentors during the hackathon, and we have found new found respect for the work that they do. We have also learned many valuable coding skills we can definitely use in the future.

What's next for SeedBase

We plan on expanding the number of catalog our database includes, as well as adding algorithms to determine seed quality, so that we can sort by that as well. We basically want to expand the metrics that is collected to enhance the user experience.

Built With

• beautiful-soup
• firebase
• javascript
• python
• react