SeasonOfDocs

Welcome!

Open Food Facts is a non-profit open source and open data project with a massive impact on the food and health of millions of people across the world, and we need your help to make this impact even bigger in many more parts of the world!

Getting started

If you would like to work on the Open Food Facts documentation project during the Google Season of Docs, make sure to join the Open Food Facts community on Slack, introduce yourself there and get familiar with the project.

A good way to do that is to open your fridge or cupboard to find a food item to scan with our Android or iOS application. Open Food Facts works like Wikipedia. The food product may already be in the database with its data completed. If it’s present, you will get valuable information about its nutritional quality (Nutri-Score) or its level of food processing (NOVA). If it’s not present yet, please take some pictures and add it!

Submit your statement of interest via email to contact -AT- openfoodfacts.org put GSOD in the subject, by the 9th of may, 2022: present yourself, your skills and experiences, and your personal approach to the project.

2022 project

About your organization

Open Food Facts is the "wikipedia of food".

Make better food choices for your health and for the planet

It's a database of food and cosmetic products with all the data you can find on product labels.

Food additives, allergens, packaging codes: Open Food Facts helps you make sense of the fine print on products labels. Also, you can easily compare products in 3-clicks, so that you can make more informed choices.

Made by everyone

Open Food Facts is a non-profit association of volunteers. Since 2012, 25000+ contributors have added 2 Million+ products from 180 countries using the Android or iPhone apps to scan barcodes and upload pictures of products and their labels. We helped foster the Nutri-Score across Europe which is now present on physical projects, and we’re doing the same for the planet with Eco-Score.

For everyone

Data about food and cosmetics is of public interest and has to be open. In addition to the official app, Open Food Facts is a platform for developers, and there are more than 150 re-uses of the data in many different ways: many nutrition apps to eat better, food inventory apps to prevent waste, research by health and nutrition scientists, investigations by journalists, educational games etc.

With a good documentation

As a result, many users (developers, scientists, innovators…) use and rely heavily on  the Open Food Facts API. The better documentation we have, the more reuses we'll get, and the more apps we'll get to contribute back data to this common good.

About your project

Your project’s problem

Many people rely on the Open Food Facts API to help transform the food system. Ensuring that the API documentation is OpenAPI compliant - but also clear and readable -  will promote the development of new applications based on the Open Food Facts database, scientific reuses, and improve the quality and quantity of data. This, in turn, will increase the number of conscious customers checking via apps the nutrition values of the food products they purchase and support Open Food Facts’ vision of making nutritional information available to everyone.

As a result, we made lowering the API barrier to entry and developing API data contributions two of our 2022 priorities. This project will thus help us reach those goals.

Your project’s scope

Expected outcomes:

Refresh the Open Food Facts API and make it OpenAPI compliant

• Audit the existing documentation and create a friction log, especially around the API itself, and the tools used to maintain it.
• Refresh the Open Food Facts API based on feedback/exchanges with the community
• Extend the documentation with all the new routes and APIs listed in https://github.com/openfoodfacts/api-documentation
• Ensure all existing routes are compliant with best practices for OpenAPI that allow for SDK generation, testing…
• Participate in leveling up our API game and best practices, along with the core Open Food Facts team
• (stretch goal) Set up a GitHub Actions CI pipeline with mentors to convert the doc to Open API (and then to OpenAPI generated SDKs)

Estimated time on the project: 200 hours (25 days on 5 month).

Getting started now tasklist

The following things can help you select a project and prepare your idea:

• Join our chat room
• Introduce yourself in the #api-documentation channel
• Join the channels related to the countries you're interested in
• It is important to first familiarize with the API documentation and project.
• Try one of our "good first issues" on GitHub
• Please, go through the available documentation and direct your questions to the Slack chat.
• As you learn, it is also a good idea to propose updates to the documentation.
• If you have not worked before with Git Branching, we encourage you to visit this web: https://learngitbranching.js.org/
• Fill our upcoming introduction survey (it is NOT an application form)

2022 project management

See GSOD timeline.