DreamOn

A platform focused on finding scholarships for DACA recipients.

See it live at DreamOn

How It's Made:

Utilized:

   JavaScript
   Node: server / back-end
   Express:server / back-end
   EJS: templating
   CSS: styling
   Bootstrap 5: styling
   MongoDB: database
   Mongoose: schemas
   Passport: authentication
   Microsoft Azure AI Computer Vision: determines scholarships status 
   Twilio: text reminders
   Heroku: hosting
   Cloudinary: image hosting 
   MVC design pattern

Reflections and Description:

This was a project I held near and dear to my heart, as a DACA recipient who struggled to find financial aid when going to college.

Users are able to sign up / log in as either a provider or a student. Providers can upload scholarships while students can browse and save scholarships.

Scholarships will be automatically deleted upon apply by date, although users have the freedom to delete them individually. Additionally, users can comment on scholarships and students will receive text notifications a week before the due date.

Scholarship content is filtered through Microsoft Azure Computer Vision to determine whether they allow DACA applicants or not.

Lessons Learned:

This was a really cool project to explore neumorphism style of design. It was also a joy to work with computer vision and seeing all the amazing features Azure Ai has built in as well as twilio. Implementing MVC structure is always very satisfying and absolutely worth the effort. Lastly, having started with regular promises and then converting to sync/await was a great learning experience reinforcing my knowledge on both syntaxes.

Optimizations

Styling can always be better and updated.

Upcoming features:

Accessibilty features like, high contrast and zoom in options
More costumizability for costumers
Currently Cloudinary is a free account, thus limiting submissions to images only (no pdfs)
Currently Twilio is a free account, thus limiting phone numbers to your individual number

Errors and Bugs

If something behaves unexpectedly, it is likely a bug. Create an issue and report it here

Previews

HOW TO RUN THIS LOCALLY

npm install

Things to add

Create a .env file and add the following as key = value
- PORT = 2121 (can be any port example: 3000)
- DB_STRING = your database URI
- CLOUD_NAME = your cloudinary cloud name
- API_KEY = your cloudinary api key
- API_SECRET = your cloudinary api secret
- MS_COMPUTER_VISION_SUBSCRIPTION_KEY = your azure computer vision subscription key
- MS_COMPUTER_VISION_ENDPOINT = your azure computer vision endpoint
- TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID= your twilio account SID
- TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN= your twilio auth token
- TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER= your twilio phone number
- (note: this version of the app, requires you to input a custom phone number -- as twilio account it's based on is a free account -- to use a full twilio account simple change the phoneNumber variable in controllers/posts.js )

Run

npm start

MagicMarcos/DreamOn