Think It…The Challenge: After being singled out for one too many “random” security screenings, our CEO – the Original Idea Nerd – had a Big Idea: create an app that let fellow travelers know the current security line wait times at airports across the country.
The Solution: An app that featured accurate waiting times at any TSA line at any airport across the country, with tips posted by users so travelers would be better informed and ready for just about anything the TSA security personnel would throw at them – controversial strip searches included.
Build It…
Strip Search is the first native Android app to dynamically pull data directly from the TSA website. This TSA data tracks airport security wait times, which is then published in convenient app format. The app also provides an interface for user generated content in the form of reviews on their security checkpoint experiences. And now… talk nerdy to me… Being a native Android app the user interface was written in Java with extensive use of Layouts in order to separate the UI presentation elements from the functional app code. The back-end was written in Python and utilized Beautiful Soup for scraping TSA airport status pages and PyMongo for integrating with the data store, MongoDB. For easy integration between the front-end and the beck-end web.py was used to build a RESTful API that would allow the app to perform needed CRUD actions.
Share It…
Users share their experiences directly with one another through tips and reviews of various airport security checkpoints, similar to how location-based apps share user comments. This way, users will always be in the know when traveling through various airports all across the country.