Playgrounds, find players and courts
Find the closest streetball courts near you. Join or organize events, invite your friends, follow other players' activity. Join the growing community and connect with friends and new players wherever you go.
Why Playgrounds?
The application is a guide to help you locate the nearest streetball court. Playgrounds also offer the opportunity to engage in building a community around streetball by organizing and participating in events, tournaments, pickup games, and more.
The founding idea is to provide all basketball players — whether regulars, occasional players, or newcomers — the chance to find nearby partners to share the joy of the orange ball with.
The Journey
Nearly a decade has passed, spanning the time between the initial iteration and the recent launch of the Playgrounds - Basketball.
It's been a rewarding and captivating project, where I've invested my personal time, allowing me to explore skill areas that were previously unfamiliar to me. A project that has evolved over time, both in substance and form.
What began as a passionate student project became a side project during my early career, and eventually a passion-driven endeavor accompanied by an unwavering quest: to see it through to the end.
Certainly, the task didn't appear too daunting considering the final outcome. The tools evolved, both in application development and server-side setup, enabling me to create the current version in just a few months. One pursuit often leads to another, especially concerning communication about the application and the establishment / consolidation of a streetball community, organizing sponsored tournaments, and more.
On the application side, additional features are in the pipeline. Expanding court listings is also on the agenda; currently available for Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux, and New York. A multitude of exciting possibilities lie ahead, waiting for me to explore.
Under the Hood
It started with Appcelerator Titanium and a Symfony API, then transitioned to React Native in 2016, and more recently to NestJS.
Playgrounds is a React Native app built with Expo. In the ever-evolving landscape of mobile app development, React Native has emerged as a powerful tool for crafting dynamic and efficient cross-platform applications. When combined with Expo, the result is a seamless and feature-rich mobile app that offers a great user experience.
Expo provides a set of tools, libraries, and services that simplify the development process, from creating the app to deploying it on various platforms. Its help me to focus on the app itself, rather than the setup of the development environment.
Among the libraries used: