After a few weeks work, I'm happy to share tripcoster.com.
For me, figuring out where is good value to travel to for a break away has always been a hassle. I don't know the specific dates I might want to go on, I just sort-of want to browse. I want to ask an app "How much would it be for a weekend in Amsterdam, travelling from Dublin". So, I built one. :)
Of course, you can also search specific dates too.
APIs
- Kiwi/Tequila for flights. I found this one a lot easier to work with than Skyscanner - although it can be quite slow for the vague queries
- Hostelworld for accommodation. So far this has been reasonably solid, apart from the odd bit of downtime/errors.
- Unsplash for the photos - I actually need to add in the image attribution...
I'm pretty happy with the app so far. But, plenty more todo
Next
- Other accommodation sources. Airbnb/Booking.com for some hotels/apartments etc
- Integrate Numbeo - an API for telling you how much stuff costs (like beers, for example) - so you can compare the cost of actually being somewhere, not just getting there and staying there.
- Dynamic URL routing. At the moment, you can't share a search result link. That kinda sucks. For now though, it works.
- MAYBE user accounts and saving trips that you want to go on. Not sure about this one just yet. I quite like not needing a database for this app...
Anything else? Would love feedback on design, functionality etc.
PS: I know the results can be slow to load, I'm working on backend caching and also I've some ideas to keep the user occupied while the app waits on the API response :)
Top comments (78)
Really nice!
I’m on mobile right now so I’ll test it later.
I would like to suggest though something I’ve always wanted to see, which is a visual graph of the cost of traveling somewhere over time. Is it more expensive to travel in May, or in September, or December? In my case, I can literally pick up my things and go at any time, so it would be cool to know if I wait a few weeks it would cost 20% less, for example.
Not sure how it would work though, and it might need a LOT of data... 🤔
I don’t know, just an idea :)
Yes this is a feature I also would want to see on such a site!
This helps a lot to decide when it would be best to travel to a certain destination.
Also if I set a budget and want to know when I get the best out of it.
There's an app called Hopper that shows this. Might be worth checking out :-)
Google flights has a feature like this, once you typed in your dates and destinations a price graph option shows up that shows you month by month how flight prices change.
This would be really cool, I was also thinking of doing it but the problem I see is that the price also varies depending when you're making the search. i.e in some airlines is not the same look for a flight on May to flight on September than look for it on July.
Really awesome, congrats! Out of curiosity, I was interested in using kiwi api once, but I coudn't find any info on how to enroll and get api keys for my app. You got in touch directly with the team via email or there is some resource I've missed? Thanks!
You can register at the link below ;)
tequila.kiwi.com/portal/login/regi...
Amazing, thanks! Keep up the good work!
Nice one!
Another good idea is to use the big mac index to approximate the costs of food and/or drinks at bars. This can be depended on user input regarding its eating/drinking habits when abroad.
Not sure if there is there is an API for this, but you can get the data in other ways.
Shay thanks for this. I was looking at some APIs for this - definitely something I want to add. Thank you!
Dude,this is pretty damn cool! Sure not the most advanced app, and not like going on Expedia for instance, but quickly gives me an idea and is perfect for someone like me wanting a quick estimate. Good job, I will legit be using this weekly.
Great work! Would fit perfectly for a Hackathon and way beyond. What source(s) did you use for finding the APIs?
Just google! Also RapidAPI.com. But I knew I needed accommodation and flights, so just searched the web for those APIs!
Nice work 👍,
And is nice too see that someone is use Kiwi.com/Tequila API. I working there, but not not directly on the Tequila but we use the Tequila in my Project Margarita github.com/kiwicom/margarita
We trying to build the example travel business application with cross-platform approach, one code run everywhere. We use for that react-native-web library.
Nice! When I tried to use the web version though it couldn't find "Dublin" - which is where I am.
Looks good though!
Thanks,
It is still in progress, but I will check why you can’t find a Dublin. Thanks for find
I started typing London in From field. It didn't do anything. I then clicked the dropdown to change date to next month and suddenly "dynamic" dropdown appeared under the From field. Had to select the value from the result set for it to process it. Could be a query running in background, but no indication of such (perhaps you can add a UX element to show something is happening??) Looks pretty nice and awesome otherwise.
This is really awesome.
If you include more hotels and maybe more flight possibilities I will probably use this as my holiday planner!
Will this be posted on github? Would love to contribute to it.
I'm not planning on open-sourcing it right now no - I'd like to try and build this into a product that can be used for exactly what you said.
It needs some more work of course - hotels and other accommodation types are definitely needed!
As one who struggles coming up with project ideas, I think this is a brilliant example of how to come up with an idea - "I do this thing pretty frequently, can I build something to help with it?". It gets the cogs moving in my head.
Nice job and thanks for sharing!
Absolutely. ya just gotta keep your eyes open for problems to solve. Only thing is you'll see lots of problems and soon be buried in ideas. But then the fun part of picking the right one starts.
When I was looking for a job I got tired of opening multiple job sites, so I built jobb.ie - a job aggregator for Ireland
When I was getting requests from other people to help them build their developer portfolio, I built mydevportfol.io to help them build their own.
When I wanted a nice container for my instagram posts/vidoes, I built instadev.chrisdermody.com so that I could iframe in a site and record my screen or take a screenshot (this is a WIP).
And that's just the recent ones. ;)
This is golden advice, man
thanks for the inspiration.
Of course. It's nice to see an old Post of mine still get some readers 😊
So this is a databaseless app? I am a huge fan of those and seeing as my wife and I have severe wanderlust, this is certainly an app worth looking into.
Question: you say that the data sources for this are largely APIs and you're main complaint is performance. Have you tried Gatsby? I've begun using it recently and the performance is conesiuer-level. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of plain React (although Gatbsy is built on it), or any other "digital coming of Christ" toolsets and stacks, so I understand if you haven't.
Other question: is this available for contributors? I'm just starting to get more into Node (I'm a long-time Python developer who wants to keep up) and this is the kind of app I would gladly contribute to!
Hey! yep this is databaseless at the moment. Although I think I'm gonna have to bit the bullet on that soon if I want to have some user accounts and the ability to "save" or "watch" a certain trip...
performance wise it's really just the APIs that are slow (specifically the flights) - and there's nothing really I can do about that apart from caching maybe - and even then I don't think it's gonna be that effective.
And no sorry I'm keeping this code private for the moment so it's not open for contribution. Feedback and suggestions are more than welcome though of course! :D
Its a really cool project. A lot to improve, but the first thing is that I would like you to fix the speed. I suppose it's probably a problem with the API, Even after entering the destination, for 5-8 seconds it was stuck, and I felt the site was not working at all.
Very well done. Can't wait to see how it progresses.
Thanks! I'll be sure to post updates here.
This is really amazing :o Even works for Serbia
Thanks Paul! It should work for the whole world (in theory) - but I'm sure there are some snags. Let me know if you notice any, pretty please :)
No problem, if I notice Im sure I will send feedback, but overall looks amazing, tbh such an amazing work that I find this to be really inspirational to me. Ive gotten my hopes up for new project as soon I have more experience in web dev world
Nice idea! Although, personally, I just use skyscanner to see prices to various countries and pick whatever is cheap to fly to. Then we check hotel prices and attractions. If those are affordable, off we go!
As for databases - you can use it to cache results for certain directions, this may speed up things as soon as you get some data (note that it may change). Over time you'll collect enough data to be able to build price prediction charts and calculate seasonal trends.
That is slick - could you add local co-works?
Hey Tony. I could try. I wonder is there an API I can ping for that? guessing not but if you know of any please let me know :)
Looks like Coworker.com does.. I imagine the other might too.. Check it out: coworker.com/api
niiiice. thanks for this, much appreciated!
Nice one Chris. I dabbled with a similar app few months back. The motivation was a list of travel apis I stumbled upon. Somewhere down the way I lost the enthusiasm and the app went to rest in the graveyard of side projects :)
I wish you better luck and God speed.
Ad Astra Per Aspera.
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