Bread & Butter
Tools
MySQL, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery
Created For
Databases with Web Interfaces Course,
Final Project
Bread & Butter provides college students and graduates one place to save and search their favorite recipes, allowing them to cook anytime and anywhere. Users can search for recipes not only by name or ingredients, but also by time required and equipment needed--allowing those with limited time or resources to find a recipe that fits their needs. Users can freely search and browse recipes, or create an account to add recipes to their recipe box and leave ratings/comments. This project was developed using MySQL to build a relational database, HTML5/CSS3 and JavaScript/jQuery to create the web interface, and PHP as the middleware.
Project Proposal & Design
In my project proposal, I defined the objective and intended users of Bread & Butter, and described the features that that would be implemented to achieve this objective. I analyzed existing recipe websites with similar purposes, and determined that Bread & Butter would allow users to link added recipes to other locations online. This allows users to collect recipes from all over the web in one singular location (their recipe box), and search through them based on the time or resources they have available.
I created an entity-relationship diagram to model the necessary tables and relationships needed to construct the database. While the database evolved throughout the project to accommodate changes in how information was stored, the main entities remained the same. At this stage, I also wrote the DDL statements needed to create the necessary tables and created a plan for the implementation of each version of the project.
Entity-relationship diagram for the Bread & Butter database.
Project Development
Following the timeline described in the design phase of the project, I began implementing the draft version of Bread & Butter. This version included creating the basic web interface for the project and setting up the database by creating tables in MySQL. The web interface and database were connected at this stage, to allow me to more easily view and search recipes (using keywords) in the database.
Timeline for development of Bread & Butter.
The development of the alpha version of Bread & Butter was focused on adding information to the database and fully implementing the searching and browsing features. Due to time limitations, the implementation of the rating and commenting system was moved to the next iteration.
For the beta version of Bread & Butter, I implemented the user account system, added the rating/commenting ability for each user, and allowed users to add new recipes to the database via a web form. I finished making final updates to the web interface, and created a user manual & technical report for the project.
Future Project Development
Improve security of user account system by setting up password reset via email.
Add viewing/editing of user account information.
Add ability to save recipes already in the database to a user's recipe box.
Add ability to see which recipes are already in your recipe box while searching/browsing.
Add ability to edit and delete existing recipes in a user's recipe box.
Add ability to upload and display images for each recipe.
Change "Comments" and "Rate this Recipe" text to "Review(s)" on individual recipe display pages.