Submitted by Layla Rowen as part of the requirements for graduating with honors from the Nucamp Full Stack Development bootcamp in July 2020. The app as it was submitted can be found here:
The Express API. And the React app.
An early demo site is hosted on Netlify here: https://souvien.netlify.app/
Ever wanted to know what you did a year ago? Two years ago?
Who were you and who will you become?
Built in 2020, an eventful year for the whole world, this is a journal application intended to help you build self-reflective practice around who you've been, what you've done, and who you'd like to see yourself become. With a sentence or two each day, or even just a word, you can effectively save a piece of each day of the year, like mini time-capsules for your future self to learn from.
What do you want to remember about today?
This project started unofficially on December 6th, 2012, when I made my first journal entry in a physical copy of a sentence-a-day journal. Little did I know that years later, in 2017 I'd be so attached to the process that I would become detirmined to digitize it.
Finally, in 2018 I made a version in Google Sheets, and I called it "Clever Name" because my partner suggested I "give it a clever name". I created a template of that project here.
In March 2020 I started courses in a fullstack bootcamp through Nucamp. In June I started to build a React Native app but decided to change tactics and focus on a more universally accessible React app, which I mocked up with Pencil Project, here!
This repo is a merging of these two projects, with commit history preserved: The Express API. And the React app.
I've since settled on the name "Souvien", because as a linguaphile, I adore playing with words. It's not exactly a conjugation of "souvenir", which means "to remember" in French, but it's close.
- Core Technologies:
- Mongodb
- Express; Mongoose, CORS
- React; Redux, react-router, reactstrap
- NodeJS
- Middleware: redux-logger
- Saved my life. It's like console.log() for redux state. redux-thunk
- This let me do all those wonderful .then bits!
- Other Libraries react-text-transition
- I was really excited to see my header come to life with this text animation. react-date-picker
- A ready made date selection tool! moment.js
- This let me format the date selected with react-date-picker however I wanted. reactstrap
- reactstrap gave me cool things like Cards, Forms, and Buttons.
- Applications Used: Chrome and Firefox
- (with developer consoles and Firefox React Developer Tools! VS Code
- Combined with git, this program is a force to be reckoned with! Compass
- I cannot overstate how useful it was to have the database and all its documents at my fingertips in a graphical interface at all times. Postman
- Like a cool browser that has all the server requests at its disposal, I also discovered that we can find out how many people are in space at any given moment (and who they are) by making a GET request to [this API by Open Notify](http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/People-In-Space/)!
As of 8/13/2020: This project has merged into one, and I'm currently deciding how to let users edit entries.
As of 7/28/2020: There will always be more to do. I have a list of features I'd like to add, and of course, there are still a few bugs to work out. You can check out the Issues tab, but here are some of the features I'm hoping to work on next:
- User accounts with OAuth through Passport
- Then I could finally push it to production!
- Edit entries
- Upload bulk entries
- Add comments/reflections to entries
- Add entries via speech to text
- Listen to entries via text to speech (or hear previous recordings)
- Add a picture for each day
- Select from different themes of daily quotes
- Upload a custom selection of quotes
- Opt-in to a streak display
- ...?
I couldn't have made it this far without my instructors at Nucamp. Rucha Nimbalkar was my first, and launched me with Bootstrap. Caleb Braaten was my second with React, and made a reappearance with Node/Express/Mongo, having so much patience for all my questions and attempts at humor! DeVonta Johnson was my React Native instructor who pushed me through the trench of fatigue from the firehose that bootcamps tend to be, reinvigorated my passion for coding just in time to get started on this project again.
In addition, I want to thank all the instructors who never had me as their students directly, but helped me anyway, as well as my peers who were working through their own bugs at the same time. I am so grateful for the community that Nucamp has offered, and I look forward to being that support person for future cohorts, too!