Schengen Visa Calculator

Image of Schengen Visa Calculator

Project Summary

  • Developed an improved version of the European Union's Schengen Visa Calculator with better UI using React and Node
  • Scraped data from US Department of State website using Python and set up an API that provides information for American travelers and safety warnings
  • Deployed using Render

Problem

In 2023, I spend a lot of time in the Schengen Area. Visitors from most countries are allowed to stay in the Schengen Zone for 90 days within a rolling 180 day period. This rolling window can make it confusing to calculate the days you have remaining. Moreover, when I tried to use the EU's official website, there were numerous UI problems. Most significantly, it allowed you to calculate dates beyond their 180 day limit. My visa calculator provides a better UI in that it only allows users to select dates within the 180 day eligible window and doesn't allow users to select future dates unless they specifically click a box to do so. This reduces the chances the user makes a mistake of calculating dates too far in the future.

Approach

This is an ongoing personal project that has evolved in several stages. First, I built a frontend only application with JavaScript and React and deployed it on Netlify. I wanted to make the site a bit more dynamic, so I used Python to scrape data from the United States Department of State website to obtain visa regulations for Americans. I also scraped travel and safety information.

Once I had this data, I created a backend for the app using Node, and I saved the travel and safety information in the form of a callable API that others could use themselves.