About the Project
The project objective was to build a salable platform that allows a student or company to find possible internship opportunities based on the location of the student and company.
The project was designed to be easily scaled and as user friendly as possible. When tasked with the project. I was told when tasked that I could be as creative as possible as long as it "could be visualized."
My initial image when building the website was to make a map that allowed the user to click on a company or student and in turn be given the corresponding companies or students in the area. I also had to create a fully functional administrator platform which would allow administrators to manage students and companies.
Building the project
When first building the project I decided to use Angular, Spring Boot, and PostgreSQL. Angular for the front-end, Spring Boot to manage the back-end, and PostgreSQL to store the data. It was my first time using both Angular and Spring Boot as opposed to Django but I had heard good things about Angular and Spring Boot and wanted to learn to use both frameworks.
When using Spring Boot for the first time I enjoyed how Spring Boot used JPA Repositories to interact with the database. Compared to other back-end frameworks I found it much easier to find, save and update data.
When building the front end, I was torn between using the Google Maps API and using a library called LeafletJS. I decided to use LeafletJS because I knew I wouldn't have to worry about managing an API key and I liked how mutable the map was compared to Google Maps.
After developing key features such as the "Student Pointers" and the "Company Pointers", I built the endpoints to receive data and alter data. I also used Spring Security to create a proper login page and secure the student and company data from outside users. This process took the longest time out of any other feature as I spent a lot of time fixing bugs and figuring out how to properly implement Spring Security.
Finally when I finished developing everything and fixing numerous visual errors, I had completed the project. Below is a photo of the finished product and highlights in my code.
Photo of the user interface
Links
Front-end: https://github.com/VasiliyLawing/TechMapWeb
