Rizzder web server

• Authors:

  • Cazacu Alexandru-Dan 322CA
  • Giurgiu Andrei-Ștefan 325CA
  • Plopeanu Teodora-Anca 322CA
  • Ungureanu Vlad-Marin 325CA

• Github repository:

  • https://github.com/Alexh1972/Rizzder-Web-Server

• Website link:

  • https://web-production-8696e.up.railway.app/

Application description

• We decided to implement a Tinder-like web application, where each user can meet, chat and exchange photos with other users
• Each user is responsible for his/her account, where he/her can change their personal description and their dating preferences, upload good photos, delete bad photos and set a profile picture
• After setting up the account, the user can meet new people and chat with them via text messages if they think the receiving user is worth the attention
• If a user thinks another user is not right for him/her, it is recommended to explain to him/her why and end the relationship with decency by unmatching
• Ghosting and unreasoneable blocking will trigger punishments to the abusive user

Application flow

• When a user first opens our website, he/she will land on the home page where a greeting will be seen and an encouragement to signup based on previous users experience
• If the user clicks on the signup button, the website will redirect to the signup page, where a username, a strong password and a birthdate will be required.
• After that, the user can edit their own profile, by adding photos and updating the description and preferences
• The user can edit the profile by clicking on the profile icon in the top-right corner
• To meet new people, the user will press on the multiple people icon on the navigation bar
• There will appear of other users that are compatible with the user.
• The user that requested compatible users can choose to smash or pass the recommended users.
• If the smashed account, considers they are compatible, they can a start a text chat.
• The user can see it's active chats if he/she clicks on the chat icon in the navigation bar.
• Also, if a user has problems or wants to learn more about us, by clicking on the information icon in the navigation, an About us page will appear.
• There it is displayed our mail and phone number, along with a Q&A and our "HQ" location

Languages and technologies used

• The backend part of the application was written in Python, using the Django framework.
• The python version required to run the application is Python 3.13.1.
• As for the main IDE, we used PyCharm.
• Occasionally, for small fixes we used the Github integrated editor.
• For the frontend, we decided to use HTML, CSS and Javascript.
• The database management system we used is SQLite.
• In the database, we also keep track of the user's location, in case of punishments (fees not anything else).
• For the meet feature, we used various filtering algorithms involving SQL subqueries and joins.
• The authentication system for our application is based on simple-jwt.
• The token will be stored in the cookie.
• For the deployment and hosting part of the website, we used the platform Railway, since it has a lot of free benefits and doesn't require a credit card

Individual contributions

• Backend infrastructure : Cazacu Alexandru-Dan
• Graphical design : Plopeanu Teodora-Anca
• Home, edit pages : Plopeanu Teodora-Anca
• Navigation bar : Plopeanu Teodora-Anca
• Chatrooms : Ungureanu Vlad-Marin
• Meet page: Ungureanu Vlad-Marin
• About us page: Giurgiu Andrei-Ștefan
• Deployment and hosting: Giurgiu Andrei-Ștefan

Difficulties and frustrating moments

• Deployment problems:

  • Initially, the deployed website couldn't see the static files, because Django doesn't collect static files by default. We fixed that by creating a specific folder where the static files will be collected and added a specific command in the Procfile to do that before the site is launched
    • The Procfile command python3 manage.py collectstatic --noinput

• Development problems and frustrating problems:

  • Problems with the modules since everytime we moved to a different computer we had to install all the modules for the program to work. Thankfully, we wrote a requirements.txt file where there are all the modules used.
  • Database problems when we moved to a different computer, because we had to make the migrations.

• Frontend frustrating problems:

  • Scroll-bar problems: Sometimes, on the HTML pages the scroll-bar wouldn't work. To fix this we had to introduce a new field for the css elements overflow:auto

• PyCharm frustrations:

  • In some moments, on one of our colleagues computer, PyCharm just didn't want to start and when it started it took aproximately 10 minutes.
  • We couldn't fix this problem, so the result of this issue can be seen in some commit messages (I hate PyCharm).