Created by Meredith and Bettina

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**Project description

*Our approach to designing the app

*Challenges face

*Next steps

**Wanted to work with api’s (application programming

interface)

*Originally wanted to work with the AirBnB and

Facebook api’s, but those were not readily available

*Instantly given keys for wunderground, Google maps,

8 coupons

*Suggestatron Roadtrip provided a way to tie them all

together

*Keep the design simple for the user, only requiring

one type of input (zip codes)

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* Implemented three different api’s

*Used associations--has many :through. We created a model

for each api and tied them together in one model called

road trip.

* Implemented the Devise gem to include a user sign up and

authentication

*Used Twitter Bootstrap, added a background image and

changed some of the layout

*Prototyped all models in a separate app to ensure they

would all work once integrated in our final version

*Used HTTParty to get the strings from the api’s

*Write test specs to cover user input on the index page and

the user registration

**MANY! SO, SO MANY!

*First challenge was getting information back from the api.

*We used a gem called HTTParty and used a get to grab it from the URL with our specific key.

*Then our next challenge was pulling out the data element that we wanted to display. We made calls in the show view like so.

*The 8 coupons api returned the data in an array, so we had to call the first element, then use the same methodology we employed on the weather api to pull and display the data

*Create action in the controller was different from other apps we have coded in class

**Getting the maps to show the starting and destination

points was HARD

* It was difficult working with the javascript and JQuery

*Holy crap! We used a gem built off an api combined it with the

Google maps api—lots of self discovery because no clear

documentation exists

*Determined to use Google maps api because it tied everything

together and it is very commonly used, so eventually we would

want to learn to work with it

* In our prototype we were able to display everything, but in our

final version, we only wanted to display two points and had to

handle the specificity of the locations

*Do we use an array or just one point? Neither! We had to just

implement directions, which was not the obvious answer.

**Difficulty writing test specs

*We were able to write a spec for the index page and the user

registration

*Could not find a way give dummy input to the api, so we did

our own live test through the rails console and on the rails

server

**Add more editions of Suggestatron (Suggestatron Shopping,

Suggestatron Housing, Suggestatron Nightlife, Suggestatron

Pets, Suggestatron Foodie Favorites)

*Possibilities are endless!

*Add a view for the users so they can track their history

*Add validations to the user input

*Add Google map directions to the Suggestatron

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