What’s PiperNet?

Source Code

Source Code of the Project: Code

What’s the fuss all about?

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to be a part of an event but just could not find information regarding that because of too much information overwhelming your screen?

We have all been there. Now to make sure that this episode does not occur again, I have made a platform to prevent this.

About PiperNet

PiperNet is a college networking/daily app, a particular college registers itself and it, students. The app will provide the college as well as it’s students to share information/notification in the form of a blog post/threads (like Twitter or medium) with students or make public posts to help interact with other college students regarding their events, societies, work opportunities.

These events(like internships, webinars) are shared over email or WhatsApp with no proper structure, the information is scattered and disorganized. In the previous days, I saw a friend make a GitHub repository for Bennett students but the information didn’t get the required attraction, the main reason being it was shared on WhatsApp & emails.

PiperNet tries to solve this problem by segregating the info into communities/tags, with a search bar to look for what’s happening in other colleges & interact with them.

PiperNet’s aim is to provide the following:

Convenient & Structured Platform for information sharing.

Better Interaction & less hassle.

Building Community & connection for better networking.

A platform for Disposal of knowledge, as it’s said “Knowledge shared is knowledge squared.”

Figure: UI Design Example

Tech Stack

Environment Setup

Environment setup was done in two stages:

1. Server setup
2. Client setup

Figure: Database, Backend, and Folder Structure

React.js

• JS library for building UI interfaces.
• The front-end was built using React which gives the developer usable components for good UI.

Node.js

• Execute JS Runtime Environment for the backend of our project.
• Easy to use for bigger applications.

Express

• Node.js Framework for building API for connecting backend and frontend.
• I created backend routes for authentication, blog functions, User Profile, etc. in Express.js

MonogoDB

• No SQL Database for parsing JSON objects.
• MongoDB made it easier to access & create Users, blog Schema, etc.

BootStrap

• CSS library for styling UI components
• Additionally installed material UI via npm for more styling features.

What’s Next?

• Improve UI/UX overtime for wider audience reach.
• More functions added to Administrator controls.
• Fix dependencies issue.
• Messaging feature improvement.
• Implementing more improved & refined code.
• Community feature (to be improved).
• User testing and deployment.

Experience and Learning Outcome

This project was a great learning experience for me as I got to improve my knowledge of REST API, NoSQL DB, Backend routes, etc. Overall It was a fun learning journey for the project and I would like to thank my college faculty, mentors, etc. for their guidance and for giving me an opportunity to build this as a college project.

Conclusion

By observing the daily problems, we get so used to them that they become a part of our routine. I found a way to get out of this rut by creating a Minimalist and user-friendly UI daily/social blogging app that solves the problem of information overflow faced by people in the same situation as me. It was a great source of learning & fun to implement.