Project Playdate Birdies

A web app where parents and grandparents can find playdates for their children.

For a demo of my app, please visit this link Playdate Birdies Demo.

To experience the app, please visit this link Playdate Birdies Website

About

• Playdate Birdies is a community of parents and grandparents who love to bring their kids to outdoor activities to learn, play and make friends.
• No matter how young children are, outdoor activities are beneficial to their development.
• Interacting with other kids of similar age helps them socialize and have fun.
• Parents can volunteer to host a playdate at their chosen location (usually a public park). Other parents can search for a playdate of their interest and register to join.
• The app supports other features, such as following hosts, send email invitations to friends, add events to personal calendar, receive email reminders, and suggest playdates based on users' interests.
• Let's help our kids play, grow and make friends, one playdate at a time.

Technologies Used

• Back-end: Python (Flask, SQLAlchemy, Flask-Mail, Celery)
• Database: SQL, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy
• Front-end: Javascript, HTML, Bootstrap, AJAX, JSON, Jinja, React
• APIs: Google Map APIs (Maps JavaScript API, Places API, Geolocation API)

Features

• Users can create an account, login, reset password and logout. Users' data is saved in the database with password being hashed by Python library passlib, argon2 for security.

• Users can perform a search for a playdate by one or multiple parameters such as city or zipcode, date, age group, and/or activities. This searching feature is implemented by query chains in SQLAlchemy to the PostgreSQL database. Check out my query chains (line 103 - 121) .

• Search results show playdate details with location markers on the map as well as user's location (if granted permission). I implemented this page using Google Maps APIs to display map, location markers and user's location. Result details are shown by DOM manipulation in JavaScript. Check out how I displayed map and location markers.

• Register feature: REACT page with updates of who's coming to the playdate and option to receive email reminder. Email feature was implemented by Flask-Mail and reminders are scheduled using Celery. Check out my React register feature.

• Hosting feature, with the help of address autocompletion in Google Map APIs.

• User profile with contact info, favorite and events as list. Users can update profile or change their password anytime.

• Users can view their playdates in calendar. I implemented this calendar by using FullCalendar in JavaScript. See my JS calendar code and my show calendar route (line 767-797).

• Follow hosts, add park to favorites, cancel playdates or registrations with email notifications to the host/participants. All changes are updated in the database.

• Send email invitations to friends. An email with the event registration link will be sent to selected friends and they can register if interested.

• Personalize playdate suggestions based on users' interests. A list of recommended playdates sorted by score and date is displayed on the homepage for logged in users to browse. Check out my scoring algorithm (line 167-213) and my sorting algorithm (line 104-130).

Set Up

To run this project, install it locally:

• Clone this repository

$ git clone https://github.com/hoaian-phan/project-playdate-birdies.git

• Go into the repository

$ cd project-playdate-birdies

• Create a virtual environment on MacOS

$ virtualenv env

On Windows OS

$ virtualenv env --always-copy

• Activate virtual env

$ source env/bin/activate

• Install dependencies

$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt

• Create a secrets.sh file to assign a value to SECRET_KEY and run it

source secrets.sh

• (Optionally) Seed the database: python3 seed_database.py Note: if you do not run seed_database.py, make sure you create a database named playdates as well as the tables by running the following commands:

createdb playdates 
python3 -i model.py
>>> db.create_all()

• Run the app

$ python3 server.py

You can now navigate to 'localhost:5000/' to access Playdate Birdies.

Project Status:

Project is completed. Future updates inlcude setting up mail server (instead of test mail server) and deploy.

Credits:

• I learned how to use Celery from miguelgrinberg: https://github.com/miguelgrinberg/flask-celery-example and Robley Gori https://stackabuse.com/asynchronous-tasks-using-flask-redis-and-celery/
• I learned how to use FullCalendar from Gordon Chan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXW2A4Q81Ok
• Many thanks my to instructors, Jocelyn Tang and Steve Chait, my cohort TA Drue Gilbert, my mentor Joyaan Bhesania for helping me with my project.
• Special thanks to my baby Andy Gia Hoa Phan for being the inspiration for my project.

Comments or Questions:

Please contact me via LinkedIn or <Email.