MealBudget app : developing a mobile application for calculating the cost of a meal with React Native and Expo
Kellokumpu, Juska (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025060520843
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025060520843
Tiivistelmä
The objective of this practice-based thesis was to create a mobile application for calculating costs of meals. The technologies used in the project were React Native, Expo, Node.js, Express, and PostgreSQL. The theory part covers these technologies, and the practical part goes through the development process of the application. The application was named as MealBudget.
In the beginning of the development the minimum viable product was defined. The application should at least have a pantry section for saving ingredients, a recipes section for saving recipes and a way to link ingredients to recipes. After the ingredients would be linked to the recipe, the total cost and a cost of a portion would be calculated for the recipe based on the cost of the ingredients. Nice-to-have features were also defined. They included a grocery list, nutrition info, saving recipes from the internet and price history for ingredients. After the design phase, the programming of the application was carried out.
The result is a working mobile application that is able to calculate the cost of the recipe based on the linked ingredients. The goal of a minimum viable application was reached, yet the nice-to-have features were not implemented. Due to time constraints the focus was placed on enhancing the existing features instead of adding new ones. Finishing tasks and fixing issues took more time than intended.
A number of suggestions were made for future development. The current cost calculation is a simple one so it should be changed to account for different densities in ingredients. Besides the nice-to-have features mentioned above, the application could benefit from more pleasing styling and small quality of life improvements that make the user experience smoother. Adding proper testing would ensure that the functionality of the application stays good when new features are added. After the application is improved, it could be deployed to the public.
In the beginning of the development the minimum viable product was defined. The application should at least have a pantry section for saving ingredients, a recipes section for saving recipes and a way to link ingredients to recipes. After the ingredients would be linked to the recipe, the total cost and a cost of a portion would be calculated for the recipe based on the cost of the ingredients. Nice-to-have features were also defined. They included a grocery list, nutrition info, saving recipes from the internet and price history for ingredients. After the design phase, the programming of the application was carried out.
The result is a working mobile application that is able to calculate the cost of the recipe based on the linked ingredients. The goal of a minimum viable application was reached, yet the nice-to-have features were not implemented. Due to time constraints the focus was placed on enhancing the existing features instead of adding new ones. Finishing tasks and fixing issues took more time than intended.
A number of suggestions were made for future development. The current cost calculation is a simple one so it should be changed to account for different densities in ingredients. Besides the nice-to-have features mentioned above, the application could benefit from more pleasing styling and small quality of life improvements that make the user experience smoother. Adding proper testing would ensure that the functionality of the application stays good when new features are added. After the application is improved, it could be deployed to the public.