Open Food Facts is a database of food products with ingredients, allergens, nutrition facts and all the tidbits of information we can find on product labels.
Open Food Facts is a non-profit association of volunteers. 25.000+ contributors like you have added 1.7 million + products from 150 countries using our Android, iPhone or Windows Phone app or their camera to scan barcodes and upload pictures of products and their labels.
Data about food is of public interest and has to be open. The complete database is published as open data and can be reused by anyone and for any use. Check-out the cool reuses or make your own!
To start contributing, the easiest way it to join us on Slack https://slack.openfoodfacts.org/ and post an introduction about, what you're interested in, and what you would like to do. This would allow other contributors to pinpoint projects that could match your interests. For example
I'm interested by the environemental impact of food and would like to help. I'm a designer, but I would also be interested by how you estimate the environmental impact of products.
I'm using the App, and wondering how could I help to improve it.
I'm a student, in computer science, and would like to help with some development. I already do some React, and Python.
Since we are on GitHub, you can guess that Open Food Facts needs some contributions from developers and designers (main projects are detailed in next section). But there are plenty of other ways to contribute. For example, you could:
Have a bug or a feature request? Please search for existing and closed issues. If your problem or idea is not addressed yet, please open a new issue. You can ask directly in the discussion room if you're not sure
You can help translate the Open Food Facts web version and the app at : https://translate.openfoodfacts.org/ (no technical knowledge required, takes a minute to signup)
Here are the main development projects, under active development:
Open Food Facts servers (Perl | HTML/CSS | JS)
This repository is the main website (openfoodfacts.org) and the API used by other applications.
Due to the implementation of the new design, there is a bunch of small CSS issues to be fixed, and some UX improvements.
Mobile app (Flutter | Dart)
This is the official mobile application, a very important tool that help people in their everyday choices about food and also invite them to contribute to the database.
The repository | What can I work on?
A companion project is the dart-sdk
Taxonomy editor
An application made with Python/React that simplifies manipulation of the taxonomy (the knowledge graph explaining that - for example - the yogurt is a kind of milk food).
This project has the advantage of being well scoped, and new (development started in 2022). The disadvantage being the complexity of the taxonomy which can take some time to fully understand.
Robotoff
This project groups the machine learning pipelines used by Open Food Facts to simplify contribution. Detecting labels, extracting ingredients…
Most of the code is written in Python, and there's a need for both improving machine learning methods, but also improving data management and API interface.
A lot of experiments have already been done. Some of them failed, others need refinement. Better ask before starting an issue to avoid rabbit holes 🐰😉
The repository | What can I work on?
ML research and models can be found in openfoodfacts-ai repository
Hunger Games
A web app used to gamify contribution. It's a React web app that asks questions based on predictions made by Robotoff.
Other currently important projects:
(Artificial intelligence project management - Cross repository
This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute.
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