WalkSafe's goal is to offer people who might feel uncomfortable walking alone a solution they can take with them everywhere. By letting the application know your itinerary, WalkSafe is able to alert an emergency contact of the user's choice if ever something were to happen. Knowing that someone is aware of your travels can alleviate much of the anxiety experienced when walking alone. We hope to allow every user of WalkSafe to feel at ease when going out or finishing work late.
We depended a lot on Google APIs related to maps and directions, notably Places API and Maps JavaScript API. By first parsing the JSON obtained from using Google's Distance Matrix API, which allowed us to estimate the time needed to get from the origin to the desired destination. Following that, we implemented a map and an autocomplete search query in order to get a visual feed of the directions. The complicated part was to use the PlaceID for both the origin and the destination generated by the search and using it for our Distance Matrix functions. Implementing geolocation was the next step to properly centre the map when it loaded. We then added a timer, which was the main focus of our project. It was necessary to start the timer when the directions were submitted, and to send out an alert via Twilio if the user failed to arrive in time at their destination.