Hackathon 2016: Connect with you Facebook account and search for flights using Skyscanner API and get suggestions of travel routes where you can visit your global friends on your way to your destination.

Developed during the Lauzhack hackathon 2016 in Switzerland, where I did the backend side for the project using Node.js and Express.

Inspiration

These days, many of us have friends all around the world. Traveling from city A to B is not uncommon. Since low-cost airlines offer affordable flights, why not stopping by a friend in city C and spend some time with her. What it does

You can login with our service with your Facebook account. We store your friends list and match who of your friends is already on the platform. By entering your travel origin & destination as well as your travel dates, we will check, your friends and calculate the cheapest price fares for flights via your friends city to your destination. We will also show you, how much time you can spend with your friend.

How we built it

We build two node.js application. The fronted is build using React and communicates with the server via an API. The backend service is build using express.js. Flight information are being pulled in via the Skyscanner API.a Challenges we ran into

• Javascript, Javascript, Javascript

Having not worked a lot with node.js, React and JS in general, we had a hart time fighting it ;) Accomplishments that we’re proud of

• We finally got the concepts of React and it now makes all sense.
• Having this project in production, we would use the service ourselves.

What we learned

• node.js / express.js
• React

What’s next for BuddyFlights

Have a beer!

Checkout the GIT

https://github.com/erikw/lauzhack16-buddyflights

Built With

• express.js
• node.js
• react

Try it out

flight-buddy-frontend.herokuapp.com