Challenges

First-time coding anything is a challenge. So TimeBuddy, despite its super basic and super simple interactions, it was still not a piece of cake.

Challenge #1: Deciding on an API

You'd think it's easy to find an API that would allow simple time conversions, it's way way harder than I thought! (Perhaps I was just looking in the wrong places? Maybe I just couldn't understand the basic code-lingo so I over-complicated a lot of things? We will never know...) It was a nightmare looking through pages after pages of APIs. I ran into gems that won't install, outdated gems, gems that simply don't work...

Why isn't there a universal format for API documentations??

I finally found this beautiful API called timezonedb. It had clear documentations, easy instructions, and required no gem installs ;)

Challenge #2: Working around naming conventions

Timezonedb, while I loved its simplicity, had its limitations. It would only work if users type in city names in exactly this format: City/London, which is a somewhat unnatural way for people to type in city names (at least for me). So I had to look for an alternative way to get around this issue. Luckily, our professor Daragh came up with a brilliant way of poaching the coordinates-location feature of a weather API and integrating it with timezonedb. His solution opened my eyes on how code can be manipulated, and also how much more I still have to learn!!