For this webapp, I followed the tutorial here: (https://scotch.io/tutorials/build-a-real-time-twitter-stream-with-node-and-react-js)

Since I haven't worked with React before, and wanted to start simple, I also looked at this tutorial: (https://blog.alexdevero.com/learn-react-practice-create-gallery/) although this code is not included in my project.

I learned a bunch and struggled a good amount as well through this tutorial. The hardest parts for me were the steps of the tutorial that were completely glossed over, such as setting up a local MongoDB database. This took me a while to figure out and I had to read a lot of the documentation on MongoDB outside of this tutorial. I also learned a ton about javascript of course, which is a language that I have almost no experience in. Once I was able to figure out the database and get the website to show up on http://localhost:8080/, following the rest of the tutorial was pretty easy. I also had some issues just configuring node and npm on my Windows machine but I was able to figure it out thanks to other people who faced the same issues on Stack Overflow. I learned how to use the Twitter API and get my consumer secret key and my access token keys which was a cool experience. When I finally got the website and all the tweets to show up it was pretty satisfying.

Frustratingly, I wasn't able to get one of the coolest components of this tutorial to work for me, even though I think I am super close. The tweets are supposed to update on the page in real time, but mine only update when I refresh the page. Even though I followed the tutorial instructions, including setting up the watch that should update the content when new items are added to the database, I still don't see the live updates. I would really like to figure this out, as I think I am right on the verge of having this feature work.