UMass Nutrition
Description as a Tweet:
A nutrition app that allows UMass students to easily track their favorite foods from the dining commons as part of their daily caloric intake
Inspiration:
As someone who has tried to track their calories at UMass, the dining app gives nutritional information in pure HTML instead of providing a barcode that can be scanned into other nutritional tracking apps such as Myfitnesspal, etc. We decided to try to make an app that made the entire process seamless.
What it does:
Right now the python script we made can extract information from the UMass Dining website, and can selectively take any information.
How we built it:
We tried to draw out the structure of the flow of information and then proceed to tackle each issue one-by-one
Technologies we used:
- HTML/CSS
- Java
- Python
Challenges we ran into:
The original HTML file of the UMass dining website was a hassle to deal with because it wasn't apparent how food items were to be separated. Also, it was our first time working with python, so those beginner hurdles were faced. Another issue that came up near the end was that we didn't know how to make an Android app, and making it was a lot harder than just creating some .java files.
Accomplishments we're proud of:
I'm proud that the UMass Dining web scraper actually works, and that I was able to learn a lot of about data processing within python.
What we've learned:
Increased my python skills, learned some different libraries, and understood how the android development environment is different from just programming in java
What's next:
Try to make an actual app and see if the UMass nutritional advising department would still be interested in it.
Built with:
Anaconda, Spyder, Android Studio
Prizes we're going for:
- Best Mobile App
- Best Documentation