For the last two weeks of my Programming in Python class, we were given the challenge of creating a web application that made use of data from two different APIs.

 

When it comes to finding pictures of items on a restaurant's menu, Yelp's website has some really tasty looking photos from user submissions. However, the order and large selection of these photos can make the experience confusing to somebody who wants to quickly search for the latest, most popular menu items from a list of restaurants.

Instagram is a much more common platform for people to post photos of their food at a geotagged location, and if these photos could be combined with restaurant information from Yelp, users would be able to make quick judgments on what restaurant to go to by finding a much more active selection of the latest photos from a restaurant's menu.

 

With access to both of these platform's data through the Instagram API and Yelp API, my colleague and I were able to use HTML, CSS, and Python in conjunction with Google App Engine to create a web application that provided users with the latest geotagged Instagram photos for their local restaurants and businesses.

 

Being our first time coding in HTML and CSS languages, we faced many issues in getting our data to populate properly on each page. A lot could be said about improvements to the styling of our web app, but overall, we were proud of the implications that a platform like ours could provide to those seeking a quick way to find local restaurants based off recent images of the menu items.