Welcome to MINI META

1) Team Members:

Madelyn Dempsey: dmadelyn
Nick Kuo: nickkuo
Alan Du: 
Arnav Ghatiwala


2) FEATURE DESCRIPTIONS

Login:
    On the login page (the default page), users can enter a username and password, which triggers a call to our backend to see if the password was correct, and makes use of our encryption scheme to ensure that passwords are hashed correctly. 

User Registration:
    User registration (reachable via the /register route or when someone clicks create account from the login page) shows the user 8 input fields to enter their information in order to register. The user must enter a unique username, a password, first name, last name, email, at least two interests (selected via a dropdown with pre-set inputs that the user can choose from), affiliation, and birthday. The interests are restricted to a certain subset of interests in order support the 
    newsfeed feature properly. If the user fails to fill in a field or choose at least two interests, then an error message will pop up and the user info will not be written to our database. 

Account Changes:
    A user can press an icon in their navigation bar that routes them to /editprofile where they can make changes to their email, affiliation, password, and interests. Again, the interests input field requires at least two inputs, or else the user will see an error message and the updates will not be made in the backend, so no post request is made. Each input field triggers a different action, so only one change can be made at a time. This page also displays the UserInfo component, so the user can see their current information. 

Navigation Bar:
    At any point after logging in, a user can see a navigation bar displayed at the top of their screen. In this navbar, there is a search bar, and several icons to route the user to different features within the application:

        Search Bar: 
            As the user types a name into the search bar, a dropdown of suggested users is displayed based on the users in our database whose first and last names start with the letters typed by the user. For instance, if a user types s and Sarah Batta and Steph Cao are users in the system, then Sarah Batta and Steph Cao will be displayed under the search bar. This bar is not case-sensitive, and once a suggestion or the search bar has been pressed, the user will be routed to that person's profile page, provided that they are in the system. 

        Edit Profile Icon:
            Once the user pressed the icon in the navbar with a box surrounding a person icon, they will be redirected to /editprofile and the account changes feature, as described above. 

        NewsFeed Icon:
            When a user presses the NewsFeed icon (image of a newspaper) they will be redirected to our newsFeed via the /newsfeed route, where their personalized feed will be displayed. 

        Chat Icon:
            When the user presses the chat icon (a message bubble) they will be redirected to their personal chat page via the /chat route. 

        Logout Icon:
            When the user presses the logout icon (door with arrow) they will be logged out, the session will be cleared so that their username is no longer available in the cookies, and and they will be redirected to the login page. 

        Home Icon: 
            When the user presses the home icon (house) they will be redirected to their personal home page containing their post feed, account overview, and profile via the /home route. 

Home Page:
    When the user lands on their home page (/home) they will see 
    
User Profiles:

Chat:


NewsFeed:
        

3) EXTRA CREDIT

4) SOURCE FILES

5) INTEGRITY STATEMENT

    All code written in this project was written by one of the people listed in section 1), all code is original and developed for use in this project only. 

6) INSTRUCTIONS