Post by Navin Prabhakar

🚀 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲: From Summer Break to Deployment: Building a Campus Web App for IIT Patna Over my summer break, I explored web development and built a Daily Use Student Web Application (PWA) tailored for the IIT Patna community to solve everyday student bottlenecks. The app is now live! 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀:  🔵Schedules & Transit: Sorted timetables for 1st–3rd years and live bus tracking with an "upcoming buses" widget on the home screen.  🔵Utilities: A peer-to-peer Campus Store to buy/sell, and a Cab Sharing tracker to coordinate rides.  🔵Mess Hub: Access to mess menus across all hostel messes with working feedback and complaint filing.  🔵Admin Tools: A targeted Notice Board to push alerts to selected student groups.  🔵Security: Institutional Authentication restricting access strictly to IIT Patna email domains. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗯𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝗜 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗱  🔴Email Delivery Blocks: My automated Gmail setup sent numeric OTP codes for registration, but the institute's mail server flagged them as spam/phishing and blocked delivery entirely.  🔴SharePoint Access Barriers: Official academic schedules are hosted on a secure SharePoint server that denies direct external API access.  🔴Data Management: Coordinating structures for mess menus, complaints, and targeted notices simultaneously took massive effort. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗜 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗺  🟢Filter Bypass: I replaced numeric OTPs with a direct account activation link. Because the email lacked numeric codes, the institute filters stopped flagging it, and delivery succeeded.  🟢Data Seeding Script: Since I couldn't fetch SharePoint data over the web, I wrote a local Python script. When I download schedule updates, the script automatically reads the files from my download folder, parses the data, and converts them into clean CSVs for the database.  🟢Cloud Database: Integrated MongoDB to securely hold, structure, and fetch dynamic records—like cab-sharing logs—instantly site-wide.  🟢UI Refinement: Used mobile-first constraints to give the entire platform a seamless, native phone-app feel. 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀  🟣Modern Stack: Transitioned to TypeScript for safer code and Tailwind CSS for layout styling.  🟣Hybrid Data: Handled static data via parsed sheets alongside a traditional cloud database (MongoDB), giving me my first introduction to backend APIs.  🟣Infrastructure: Learned UI/UX optimization for mobile(still a noob), using Git/GitHub for version control, and deploying live builds on Vercel. This project taught me that software engineering is less about writing perfect code on the first try and more about debugging resourcefully when real-world systems don't cooperate. Thank you for reading!  ✨Excited to see how the student community uses the platform. #WebDevelopment #NextJS #Python #MongoDB #BuildInPublic #UIUX #IITPatna I’ve dropped the live website and public GitHub repository links in the first comment below!👇