Your next pet, just a swipe away
Tags: showdev, mobile, firebase, ionic
Published: 2020-04-22 02:34:15

## Where did this idea come from?

My wife and I had recently found out that we were having our first child. While telling our friends about the great news they recommended an app called Kinder that would help us find names we liked in a fun tinder-like swiping interface. Few weeks later, during the Thanksgiving Holiday, we kept seeing how many dog and cat rescues were asking for help! We had fostered and adopted animals before and wanted to help but, with two dogs already we knew fostering or adopting would be option. That is when it hit me, why not take the concept behind Kinder and apply it to fostering and adopting pets!? I opened up my laptop, started designing and coding, and around thirty days later it was released on the app stores.

## About The App

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/3s5yx8hjfbg4yn5jgh41.jpg)
<figcaption>My first ever dribbble. Onboarding, login and main screens of Petly.</figcaption>

Search over 300,000 animals at nearly 14,000 shelters across the country. Pair accounts with another user to match on pets you both like and easily contact rescues and shelters right from the app. Pet data and images are powered by the Petfinder API, a searchable database of animals who need homes. Petly provides a new and fun way to search these animals and connect to your partner. This way you can both search the same dogs and match on animals you both would like to adopt.

## Tech Stack

Petly is built with [Ionic](https://ionicframework.com/) and [Capacitor](https://capacitor.ionicframework.com/). I cannot say enough amazing things about everything the Ionic team has released into the development community. Just the simple fact that I was able to get from zero to app store in around 30 days is enough to blow you away. In addition to these frameworks and tools, I use [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/) as my backend. It serves as my auth provider, database, serverless functions and push notifications. Talk about a one stop shop for all things dev. Lastly, I also use now from [Zeit](https://vercel.com/) or I guess now "Vercel" to deploy a quick one page landing page for my app. All in all, ZERO dollars spent to get an app and landing page off the ground and into people's phones. Amazing.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/wf1xk2s8ivdeexqfjv9c.png)
<figcaption>Meet Maple--a six month old labrador retriever_pit bull terrier mix who is available locally.</figcaption>


## The Future

For right now it is just a side project. I built it with full intention of it just helping people find their next pet and supplying another avenue for pet lovers to reach the available animals. I would love to partner with shelters and rescues to get animals on the app even faster. I would also love to find a way to bring fostering more to the forefront and provide a more streamlined way for those who want to foster to get involved.

## Links
[Website](https://getpetly.com/)
[Apple App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/petly/id1492702817?ls=1)
[Google Play Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getpetly.app)
[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/petlyapp/)