It’s done.
I wrote the entire bit of code that automatically pulls in restaurants this weekend. You now have an option on your start page (the first page you see after logging in) called “Add restaurants automatically“.
If you click on that, type in a restaurant name and the zip code that’s closest to it (or to you), you should get an edit page for a new restaurant with the restaurant name, address, state, phone number, and website address filled in already for you (if it finds the restaurant for you… if not, you’ll just be returned to the same page). If there are any other fields you want to fill in, you can do it right there and then save it. (I recommend that you at least fill in the food type and amount you want to spend). And there you go…new restaurant!
Enjoy. I’ll be working on enhancements to the automatic restaurant feature and the other upcoming features in the near future… right now, though… it’s bedtime.
April 2nd, 2006 at 12:44 am
I like the automatic restaurant adder. One big thing though. I don’t know many people that know both the name AND zip code of restaurants.. It’s would be great to search through a list or add by zipcode or city. It’s still unfurtunately too manual.
April 2nd, 2006 at 1:44 am
I don’t know the ZIP code of the restaurants near me either… you can put your own ZIP code in and it should still work if the restaurant is in your city… everyone knows what ZIP code they live in..
Sorry if I wasn’t clear about that. It doesn’t have to be the exact ZIP of the restaurant…. Actually I’ll go clarify on the “Find a Restaurant” page now.
“Add by city” is coming very soon, as the bulk of the code is written and that should only be another query field… I just wanted to get it added as soon as I could. I’m going to be out of town for the next week or so and I had this functionality working, so I added it. I chose to implement ZIP first because it’s shorter for people to type. Both fields should be available in the near future.
April 3rd, 2006 at 12:34 am
You may want to make the search display multiple hits if nessicary. A resturant in my home town also has a resturant in a slightly bigger town. Well, even though I put in the exact zip, it found the northern location. Also, pulling/checking for a website would be nice.
Also some sort function would be nice, because my list current goes P,M,A,M (first letters so I don’t look like an advertisement..)
April 3rd, 2006 at 6:05 am
Ryan-
I do plan on making it return multiple hits… that won’t be very hard to implement at all. I just ran out of time this past weekend before I could fully flesh out the entire feature.
I will be working on sorting as well for the restaurant listing… As per someone else’s request, the default “Add restaurant” option on that page will be the automatic one as well.
However, hngry does check for a website and will pull it in if it is available in the Yahoo Local listing for that particular place. If it didn’t for you, the website is just not in Yahoo Local’s database. hngry will pull in as much info for you as it can for each restaurant, and that’s definitely one of the fields it gets if it’s available.
April 8th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
How does it get the results? I just did a yahoo and google local search for the place, and it was top result in both engines.
April 11th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
An idea -
An adjustable radius around a zip code pulls in all restaurants within that radius that hngry can find. Allow user to check/uncheck a box to have it added/not added to user account.
Flag all new line items with an icon signifying that personal preferences need to be entered for each new entry.
Seems like a bit of work for a family guy with 4 young children but back in my bachelor days I might have used something like this.
April 11th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Sounds like something useful… I’ll definitely look into adding those features. I’m definitely going to implement something to let users pick which restaurant actually matches what they want when it pulls up multiple options for a restaurant search… I’m going to add a checkbox to that for sure.
Thanks for the input!