MindHive-FullStack

This project is a Flask-based web application designed to visualize outlet locations on an interactive map. It offers a user-friendly interface to display outlets and their 5KM radius catchment areas using Leaflet, a JavaScript library for interactive maps.

Getting Started

To use this application, follow these steps:

Prerequisites

• Python (3.x recommended)
• Flask
• Flask-SQLAlchemy
• Flask-CORS (for development)

Installation

1. Clone or download this repository to your local machine.

2. Install the required Python packages using pip:

   pip install BeautifulSoup4
   pip install Flask Flask-SQLAlchemy Flask-CORS
   pip install geopy

Usage

1. Run the Flask server:

   # Run scraping_storing.py first (outlets.db will be created), then run python app.py.
   python scraping_storing.py
   python app.py

2. Open the HTML file (index.html) in a web browser.

3. View the map:

   • The map will display markers for outlet locations fetched from the Flask API endpoint (http://127.0.0.1:5000/outlets).
   • Each outlet will have a 5KM radius catchment area drawn around it.

4. Once outlets.db database created, no need to run scraping_storing.py again.

5. With check_db.py, you can check what items are stored in the database (Make sure you have database before running check_db.py).

Troubleshooting

• If encountering CORS issues, ensure that the Flask server has CORS enabled (for development purposes).
• When a web application running in a browser makes a request to a server with a different origin (i.e., domain, protocol, or port), the browser's security policy might block the request due to CORS restrictions. This security mechanism prevents certain types of cross-origin requests to protect users' data and security.
• It allows the frontend (e.g., HTML/JavaScript) hosted on a different port or domain to make requests to the Flask backend API without being blocked by the browser.
• Make sure to specify the right SQLite name (or path) in app.config['SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI'] = 'sqlite:///outlets.db' in scraping_storing.py.
• Make sure to specify the right URL to your API endpoint in index.html under fetchOutlets() function.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to submit issues or pull requests.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.