Inspiration
Going through airports solo seems to be an unavoidable part of life. You walk in, go though security, and wait a few hours for your flight, trying to kill time with no one around. After all, you can't bring your friends to the airport, right?
Well, if you can't bring them, make them! Tindair gives you the chance to connect to others going on the same flights as you. You can make new friends, find travel buddies, and get help travelling -- all through the power of our airport matching system!
What it does
After opening the page, users are directed through a short questionnaire that asks for three pieces of information -- their name,
their departure airport,
and their arrival airport.
after answering, our system will automatically place them in a groupchat, matching them to other users that entered the same airport information.
From there, it's up to the users! From meeting up at restaurants to carpooling at their arrival destination, the options are limitless -- all through the power of realtime chat.
How we built it
The application was built using Node.js, with the client-side being written in React.
Much of the styling was written using custom CSS instead of a framework, so that we could match the custom color and design scheme we decided on.
The back-end was created using Express.js, and WebSockets to allow for realtime chat.
Challenges we ran into
Despite how standardized React and Node.js are, it took us much longer than expected to get everything set up on all our machines. We ran into lots of setup problems related to software versions, package managers, and operating system distributions, which took us a long time to get working.
Because we worked with custom styling, it took us a lot of time to adjust everything to our liking. Even though it took extra time, it was definitely worth it!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Being able to create realtime chat functionality -- as well as the system to match users to their groupchat -- was one of our biggest accomplishments.
What we learned
We learned lots about React, WebSockets, and integrating front-end with back-end code. We especially learned how to work with Node and NPM to create full-end applications.
What's next for Tindair
In the future, we would like to add more features to our chat! Minigames, location sending, voice notes -- anything and everything to help our users.
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