Adventure Day will provide a randomly generated walking route to a user, for adventuring! It was created with two relatively simple goals in mind: to get people walking more, and to explore places one might otherwise not encounter.
This app was designed with ease of use in mind, and as such has a few barriers to entry as possible. A user simply needs to visit the site. Adventure day works as follows:
- A route from 4 inputs
- Origin
- The form auto-populates with user's geolocation if permission is given
- User may enter an address or location name into the form
- Kind of location the user is interested in(Restaurant, Park, Museum, etc.)
- A search radius around the origin in which to search for places
- A randomized route button OR an optimized route button
- Origin
Once a user selects a route they will be taken to a Google Maps page or, if the user is on a mobile device, a Google Maps App. After that all one has to do is press 'Start' in the app and they will be off!
You will need to have access to a text editor, I use Atom. You will also need Python and Django. I recommend using a software package management system, such as Homebrew (This is the one I use).
Open a terminal window. Your computer comes with a terminal installed, but there are numerous 3rd party options with additional features. I use iTerm but there are a number of excellent options.
Now that you have a window open and enter the following command to install Homebrew
mkdir homebrew && curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew
Once the installation completes enter the command (this installation can take several minutes)
brew install python3
Now that you have Python v3 installed, you can fork and clone this repository
git clone [email protected]:YOUR_USER_NAME_HERE/adventure-day.git
Change directories into the repo, and create a virtual environment
python3 -m venv YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_NAME
Next, you'll want to install the required packages for the project
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
Pip (Pip installs packages) was installed with Python3 via Homebrew, it is to Python what Homebrew is to your OS.
While this project does not currently utilize a database, it does have one set up in anticipation of coming features. If you don't already have PostgreSQL (also called Postgres) installed run the following commands to install it and create the db
brew install postgresql
psql
This takes you into the PostgreSQL interactive terminal. Some commands to note:
control + \is the best way to exit the psql environment- Some returns will keep showing more data on most keystrokes, hit
qto get out - Semicolons are import in here, if you're having issues with some commands make sure to end with
;
While in the psql environment enter
CREATE DATABASE adventure_day;
This app also requires the use of two keys you'll want to keep secret, the project comes with python-decouple included. Create file named .env, copy into it the contents from TEMP.env, this is where you'll place your Django and Google Maps API keys.
You can generate a key here.
Replace YOUR_KEY_HERE in line 1 of .env leave this open, you'll need it again in a few minutes.
You'll now need to acquire a Google Maps API key. Follow the instructions on Google Developer. Please Note: This does require a credit card, you'll receive $300 credit for API calls/month from Google, but I recommend you familiarize yourself with billing agreement, free plan, and respective API charges. (After ~300 calls to 5 services each, and 2000+ to Distance matrix the total charges were $25. Covered by the credit, of course)
Once you have a Google API key add it to .env en lieu of YOUR_SECRET_HERE on line 2. Your secrets are now hidden in the ignored .env file.
Run the command
python3 manage.py runserver
Now that you have the server running in your terminal, head to your browser and navigate to localhost:8000.
You're all set! If you encountered any setup errors let me know in the comments. (Issues coming soon)
One thing I was particularly excited to get implemented on this project is a TSP solution for finding the shortest route using the randomly generated places.