My girlfriend likes to travel, I like to know how much it's gonna cost. Vue, node and some APIs later, I give you tripcoster.com

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 :)

Comments

[sonsolescastro908]

Hey!! On guipuzcoaexiste.es you will find anything you could know about Guipuzcoa. Have you ever been there?

[Chris Dermody]

Thanks!

[Vikram Sharma]

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.

[Shay Ashkenazi]

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.

[Chris Dermody]

Shay thanks for this. I was looking at some APIs for this - definitely something I want to add. Thank you!

[Paul]

This is really amazing :o Even works for Serbia

[Chris Dermody]

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 :)

[Paul]

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

[Shahid Kamal Khan]

Prices shown are higher than my usual flights. From where you're fetching these?

[Chris Dermody]

Shahid sorry for the delayed reply, I must have missed your comment. I'm getting the flights from Kiwi. What source are you usually using??

[Shahid Kamal Khan]

I usually use an app called PayTM. I also use sites like MakeMyTrip, Yatra.com etc wherever I find lowest fare.