Waste Nothing - A Digital Cookbook and Shopping Assistant

Abstract

In this thesis, we develop an application with the goal of helping the users waste less food by keeping track of their fridge and pantry contents, and let them compare their fridge contents with the ingredients list of their recipes. We also offer a shopping list section where the user can plan their shopping trips.

We made this application as a Single Page Application (SPA), as this makes navigation through the application work seamlessly for the user, without ever having to reload the page. SPAs are modern, fast and dynamic applications. To do this, we used React and JavaScript for our client-side application with client-side rendering. We evaluate two different database options for the application using Azure SQL Database and MongoDB and connect to both of them through our web server written in Python. We used Firebase to host our application online and as our identity provider. The goal was to make a fast, user-friendly and reliable application using modern technologies.

Through unit testing and user testing, we ensured the quality of our application. We have created a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that offers the most important functionalities to fulfil our visions for the application. It is built to be easy to extend with more functionalities. This has been done through the use of the SOLID design principles, with a focus on the Single Responsibility Principle especially.

In this thesis, we develop an application with the goal of helping the users waste less food by keeping track of their fridge and pantry contents, and let them compare their fridge contents with the ingredients list of their recipes. We also offer a shopping list section where the user can plan their shopping trips.

We made this application as a Single Page Application (SPA), as this makes navigation through the application work seamlessly for the user, without ever having to reload the page. SPAs are modern, fast and dynamic applications. To do this, we used React and JavaScript for our client-side application with client-side rendering. We evaluate two different database options for the application using Azure SQL Database and MongoDB and connect to both of them through our web server written in Python. We used Firebase to host our application online and as our identity provider. The goal was to make a fast, user-friendly and reliable application using modern technologies.

Through unit testing and user testing, we ensured the quality of our application. We have created a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that offers the most important functionalities to fulfil our visions for the application. It is built to be easy to extend with more functionalities. This has been done through the use of the SOLID design principles, with a focus on the Single Responsibility Principle especially.