Books4U Blog post
Define the purpose of your project
The purpose of our project is to promote reading, education, solidarity and personal growth. The project was created for all types of public interested in increasing knowledge through reading a good book. There is also the purpose of awakening solidarity with people with fewer economic resources who do not have access to the purchase of a book.
Our project was created by:
In the Frontend part: Ever Daniel Gonzalez, and Isaac De La Hoz.
In the Backend part: Sebastian Obando, Emmanuel Palacio, and Hector Orozco.
We are Full Stack Developers graduates of Holberton School, with strong skills like following the framework as an excellent programmer does.
Developing programs with new technologies, and adapting to change in a simple and effective way, following these recommendations learned at Holberton School, we can say with full confidence that we are excellent programmers.
Our great work team used the Trello application for the scheduling of tasks and the step-by-step follow-up of our project.
My personal approach: at first I thought about creating an application to host different sites for the sale of products or services.
then for the project time limit (1 month) I came up with the idea
make an application for ecommerce (sell mazamorra online)
and in this application to be able to implement all the knowledge acquired.
The idea of selling books came from my teammates, I added the possibility to give it an altruistic approach and implement
book donations for people who have no way to buy a book.
All these ideas gave rise to Books4U as an excellent educational and solidarity proposal aimed at all people who see education as the best way to live a life full of knowledge, since knowledge is itself an invaluable wealth.
My story: everyone on our team enjoys reading books, so it was an easy project approach to agree on. For me, I grew up in Medellin, a small city in Colombia surrounded by roads and forests. The libraries that existed were very far from my house. By 1977 I was 10 years old, someone in Comfama came up with the great idea of using an old train wagon from the dying Ferrocarril De Antioquia, and there to set up a library inside. When my friends and I heard this wonderful news we decided to go to see such a wonderful idea a train wagon library, very close to my house, we could walk there
take homework and consult books to do them, then in free time, read a story of animated stories or a good book of literature, in fact we really enjoyed this wonderful creation of Comfama, today it still exists, I invite you to come and know it is called Biblioteca Tren De Papel “Carlos Castro Saavedra “is located in the Florencia neighborhood of Medellin Calle 113 №70–73
It was there that I really discovered the magic of reading when I was 10 years old.
Biblioteca Tren De Papel “Carlos Castro Saavedra“ Florencia-Medellin
Here let my imagination fly through the wonderful world of reading.
What a great idea Comfama, many children come with the curiosity of knowing this old train wagon, without knowing that the best is inside it, the magic of reading absorbs you and they spend magical hours where the imagination is allowed to fly.
This is my story, how spectacular it would be to take hundreds of old train wagons full of books to the most remote places in Colombia, thank you Comfama for supporting education, thank you for making my interest in reading possible.
Summarize:
At the beginning we decided to use HTML, CSS, and Java Script for the frontend.
for the backend we decided to use Python Flask, Java Script, and MySQL.
On the way we decided to turn the project around to improve its appearance and efficiency.
That is how we decided among all the members of the working group, to migrate the frontend with React, Node Express, SCSS.
For the backend part, the work team made the decision to
work with NodeJs, and MongoDB.
These decisions, although at first it was difficult due to the time limit,
we managed to adapt all these changes and apply them to the project
We had no idea about these new technologies, but the whole team focused on researching and studying solutions to achieve the completion of the project.
The interesting part of AppJS is that it uses Node.js as the backbone. Node.js has been built to ease the process of developing scalable network applications. But today, you can see Node nearly everywhere! It has a nice API and lots of modules.
The connection URI is the set of instructions that the driver uses to connect to a MongoDB deployment. It instructs the driver on how it should connect to MongoDB and how it should behave while connected.
The next part of the connection string contains your username and password if you are using password-based authentication. Replace the value of user with your username and pass with your password. If you are using an authentication mechanism that does not require a username and password, omit this part of the connection URI.
The next part of the connection string specifies the hostname or IP address and port of your MongoDB instance. In the example above, we use sample-hostname as the hostname and 27017 as the port. Replace these values to point to your MongoDB instance.
Working remotely was one of the added values of this great Books4U project.
Follow the programming of each task, even without taking into account that later we would have to migrate technologies.
When migrating from technologies we had to learn and carry out the project at the same time, tasks such as connecting frontend and backend became difficult but they were achieved.
Another task that we had to investigate a lot was the database with MongoDB, we had no idea how to work with this, but with the dedication and tenacity of our group we managed to overcome this obstacle.
The creation and consultation of forms also became a challenge
for everyone to the point that we had to use the resources of the frontend team to complete this task.
What did we learn?
The first thing we learned was that working in an organized way as a team is capable of overcoming obstacles that arise during the course of the project.
We learned to listen to other points of view, to take into account the ideas that were emerging in our team.
We learned that if there is something that is difficult to do as a team, it becomes easier.
We learned to schedule tasks in Trello
We learned how to create a complete website (frontend and backend) from scratch, using the MERN stack.
That is why I tell my colleagues, do not stop learning, in a month we managed to learn all this with discipline and dedication.
we put love to this project.
We learned that if it is possible to achieve what is proposed.
I am an excellent person dedicated to my home and my studies, because although I have my age in mind, I will continue to learn every day of my life.
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Written by: Hector Orozco
Full Stack Developer Holberton School, March 21 2021
Medellin Colombia
