MessMate — College Mess Food Review App 🍱

A web app for students to anonymously rate their daily mess lunch. Admins, deans, and the VC get a live dashboard with scores, trends, and suggestions.

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python (Flask), gspread, Google Sheets
• Frontend: HTML/CSS/Vanilla JS, Chart.js (CDN)
• Rate Limiting: Flask-Limiter (1 submission/IP/day)
• Hosting: Render.com (free tier)

Features

• 📱 Mobile-first student feedback form (QR code scannable)
• 😡😕😐🙂😄 Emoji-based overall + per-item ratings
• 📊 Admin dashboard with trend charts and item-level analytics
• 💡 Student dish suggestion board
• 🔒 Dashboard protected by secret token
• 🛡️ Rate limiting prevents spam (1 submit per IP per day)
• 🔐 Fully anonymous — no student identity stored

Quick Start (Local Development)

1. Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+
• A Google Cloud service account with Sheets API access
• A Google Sheet with the correct schema (see below)

2. Google Cloud Service Account Setup

1. Go to Google Cloud Console
2. Create a new project (or use an existing one)
3. Enable the Google Sheets API and Google Drive API
4. Go to IAM & Admin → Service Accounts
5. Click Create Service Account
   • Name: messmate-backend
   • Role: Editor (or custom role with Sheets + Drive access)
6. Click on the service account → Keys tab → Add Key → Create new key → JSON
7. Download the JSON file and save it as credentials.json in the project root
8. Open your Google Sheet → Click Share → Add the service account email (from the JSON file's client_email field) with Editor access

3. Google Sheet Schema

Create a Google Sheet with two tabs:

Tab 1: responses (headers in row 1):

Timestamp | Overall | Rice_Curry | Rice_Rasam | Chapati | Chapati_Gravy | Poriyal | Sweet | Salad | Curd | Papad | Pickle | Review | Suggestion

Tab 2: daily_summary (headers in row 1):

Date | Avg_Overall | Response_Count | Avg_Rice_Curry | Avg_Rice_Rasam | Avg_Chapati | Avg_Chapati_Gravy | Avg_Poriyal | Avg_Sweet | Avg_Salad | Avg_Curd | Avg_Papad | Avg_Pickle

4. Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the project root:

FLASK_SECRET_KEY=your-random-secret-key-here
SPREADSHEET_ID=your-google-sheet-id-from-url
DASHBOARD_TOKEN=vc2026

Generate a secret key:

python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))"

Get the Spreadsheet ID from the Google Sheet URL:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SPREADSHEET_ID_IS_HERE/edit

5. Install & Run

# Create virtual environment
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # macOS/Linux
# venv\Scripts\activate   # Windows

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Run the dev server
python app.py

Open http://localhost:5000 in your browser.

6. Access the Dashboard

http://localhost:5000/dashboard?token=vc2026

7. Seed Demo Data

python seed_data.py

This populates 70 rows across 7 days for a realistic demo.

Deployment (Render.com)

See MessMate Hosting Guide for detailed deployment instructions.

Quick steps:

1. Push to a private GitHub repo
2. Create a Render.com Web Service → connect the repo
3. Build command: pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Start command: gunicorn app:app
5. Add environment variables:
   • GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_JSON — full JSON string of the service account key
   • SPREADSHEET_ID — from the Google Sheet URL
   • FLASK_SECRET_KEY — generated secret
   • DASHBOARD_TOKEN — e.g. vc2026

File Structure

messmate/
├── app.py                 # Flask app — routes + logic
├── sheets.py              # Google Sheets read/write helpers
├── requirements.txt       # Python dependencies
├── Procfile               # For Render.com deployment
├── .gitignore             # Ignores: credentials.json, .env, __pycache__
├── seed_data.py           # Demo data seeding script
├── generate_qr.py         # QR code generator for the mess poster
├── templates/
│   ├── form.html          # Student feedback form
│   ├── thanks.html        # Post-submission thank-you page
│   └── dashboard.html     # Stakeholder dashboard
└── static/
    ├── style.css          # Shared mobile-first styles
    └── dashboard.js       # Chart.js chart setup

Routes

Route	Method	Description
/	GET	Student feedback form
/submit	POST	Process submission (1/IP/day rate limit)
/thanks	GET	Thank-you page
/dashboard?token=TOKEN	GET	Admin dashboard (403 without token)
/health	GET	Health check → {"status": "ok"}

Notes

• Rate limiting: Uses in-memory storage. Resets on server restart (acceptable for prototype on Render's free tier).
• Anonymity: No student name, email, or identity is ever collected or stored.
• Timestamp format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS everywhere. Never change this — date filtering depends on it.