Manoa Recipes Web Application

A screenshot of the List Recipes page of the Manoa Recipes web application.

Overview

As a final project for my Software Engineering course, I worked together with a team of students to create a web application hosting various recipes people can make themselves. A link to the user guide and GitHub repo can be found here.

On the “List Recipes” page, users can filter recipes by ingredients and click on individual recipes to see further details about them. Targeted to help UH Manoa students, the site also lists nearby vendors to the school as well as their in-stock items for students to buy groceries if need be. Users can create a profile that stores their allergy information, as well as if they’re gluten free and/or vegan. You can then edit your information later if you wish.

Role and Responsibilities

The profile page in Manoa Recipes.

I worked on the user’s profile/edit profile page and functionalities as my contribution to the project. This involved accessing and displaying profile information stored in a MongoDB database, as well as updating this information via the Edit Profile page. Creating these pages involved a bit of graphic design knowledge as well in terms of creating a layout that would fit well with the rest of the site.

I also helped contribute to the user manual linked above, which gives a general overview of the site’s functionalities to visitors. Additionally, I helped recruit volunteers to review the website and give feedback once it was finished.

The Takeaways

Overall, this project allowed me to gain familiarity and experience using a wide variety of programming tools like Javascript, HTML, and CSS. Additionally, I was able to learn to use Meteor, Bootstrap, and React, tools that helped create webpages with Javascript as well as make styling them visually much easier. I also learned the basic functions of MongoDB and understood how to create more complex databases with it (ex. linking a user’s food preference information with their username and passowrd, which were stored in a separate Mongo collection.)

Lastly, this project taught me the importance of cooperation in working as a team. GitHub’s issue system helped facilitate a harmonious and successful collaboration between all teammates, thanks to its ability to delegate tasks for each member.