UIUNest

Live Platform: https://uiunest-production.up.railway.app/

UIUNest is a comprehensive platform designed for UIU (United International University) students, landlords, and administrators. It covers verified housing discovery, flatmate compatibility matching, a peer-to-peer exchange marketplace, mess bill management, and a full admin dashboard — all in a single, mobile-friendly web application.

🎉 What's New in v1.2.1 (Animated Navbar Update)

• Fluid Mobile Navigation: Completely redesigned the mobile navbar into a floating pill shape. Features a dynamic, sliding emerald bubble that perfectly tracks your interactions via a custom JavaScript requestAnimationFrame engine for 60fps buttery-smooth transitions.
• Context-Aware Auth States: The center account button now intelligently shape-shifts depending on your authentication state, turning into an animated "Login" or "Register" button based on the page you are viewing.

What's New in v1.2.0 (Final Polish Release)

• Responsive Mobile Perfection: Fixed overflow issues on the Mess Bill Manager and Profile pages, ensuring custom dropdowns and file uploads flawlessly adapt to small screens.
• Sleek Navbar Behavior: Engineered a smart navbar that remains permanently pinned on the homepage, but smoothly auto-hides with a graceful transition on sub-pages to maximize vertical screen real estate.
• Natural Copywriting: Completely rewrote the homepage marketing copy to sound conversational, warm, and distinctly human.
• Refined Aesthetics: Softened the active navigation pill radiuses to perfect the "squircle" look.

Features

For Students

• Housing Listings: Browse verified properties around the UIU campus with Leaflet maps, zone filters, and price ranges.
• Flatmate Matching: Find roommates with a weighted compatibility score based on sleep schedule, diet, noise tolerance, cleanliness, and guest policy.
• Exchange Marketplace: Buy and sell furniture, appliances, and study materials with direct offer/counter-offer negotiation.
• Mess Bill Manager: Track, split, and pay monthly utility and rent bills among housemates.
• Looking For: Post or respond to "Looking For" ads to find accommodation quickly.
• Watchlist: Save favourite listings for later.
• Notifications: Real-time in-app notifications for verification updates, offer responses, and more.

For Landlords

• Property Listings: Create and manage rental listings with photos, amenities, and pricing.
• Tenant Applications: Review and accept or reject tenancy applications.
• Verification: Upload identity documents for admin verification to earn a verified badge on all listings.
• Bills Management: Create and manage monthly bills for tenants.

For Master Admin

• User Management: View all users, suspend/activate accounts, and revoke verifications.
• Verification Review: Approve or reject landlord/user verification document submissions with one click, automatically notifying the user.
• Complaints Handling: Review, escalate, and resolve complaints between users.
• Admin Stats: Real-time dashboard with total users, listings, pending verifications, and open complaints.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: HTML5, CSS3, Vanilla JavaScript
• Backend: PHP 8+
• Database: MySQL
• Icons: Lucide Icons
• Maps: Leaflet.js
• Charts: Chart.js

Local Development & Setup

This project requires a PHP + MySQL server environment. XAMPP is recommended.

1. Start Your Server

1. Open the XAMPP Control Panel and start Apache and MySQL.

2. Database Setup

1. Open http://localhost/phpmyadmin in your browser.
2. Create a new database named uiunest.
3. Select the uiunest database → go to the Import tab → upload database/schema.sql → click Import.

This creates all 19 tables including users, listings, verifications, notifications, marketplace items, bills, and more.

3. Place the Project in htdocs

Option A: Direct Folder (Recommended)

Clone or move the repository directly into XAMPP's htdocs directory:

• Windows: C:\xampp\htdocs\UIU-Nest
• Mac: /Applications/XAMPP/htdocs/UIU-Nest

Option B: Symbolic Link

Keep the repo anywhere and create a shortcut into htdocs.

Windows (run as Administrator):

mklink /D "C:\xampp\htdocs\UIU-Nest" "C:\Users\YourName\Downloads\UIU-Nest"

4. Open the App

Navigate to: http://localhost/UIU-Nest

5. Master Admin Account

The schema includes a reset_db.php utility that seeds the master admin:

• Login: ADM-MASTER or master@admin.com
• Password: 1265Master

Security Note: Delete or password-protect api/reset_db.php before deploying to production.

Project Structure

UIU-Nest/
├── api/                         # All PHP backend endpoints
│   ├── db.php                   # PDO database connection
│   ├── login.php                # Authentication + session creation
│   ├── logout.php               # Session teardown
│   ├── register.php             # New user registration
│   ├── me.php                   # Fetch current session user
│   ├── profile.php              # Profile read/update (incl. profile_pic)
│   ├── upload.php               # Secure file upload handler (images, PDFs)
│   ├── listings.php             # Listing CRUD
│   ├── applications.php         # Tenancy applications
│   ├── watchlist.php            # User watchlist (save/remove listings)
│   ├── bills.php                # Mess bill create/read/pay
│   ├── exchange.php             # Marketplace item CRUD
│   ├── offers.php               # Offer/counter-offer management
│   ├── complaint.php            # Submit complaints
│   ├── seeking.php              # Looking-For post CRUD
│   ├── seeking_responses.php    # Responses to seeking posts
│   ├── verify.php               # Submit verification request
│   ├── verif_status.php         # Check own verification status
│   ├── notifications.php        # Fetch + mark-read notifications
│   ├── dashboard.php            # Dashboard data aggregation
│   ├── update_status.php        # Update listing/offer/application status
│   ├── check.php                # Auth check helper
│   ├── admin_stats.php          # Admin dashboard stats
│   ├── admin_users.php          # List all users for admin
│   ├── admin_action_user.php    # Admin suspend/activate user
│   ├── admin_verifications.php  # List all verification requests
│   ├── admin_action_verif.php   # Admin approve/reject verification
│   ├── admin_revoke_verif.php   # Admin revoke verification
│   ├── admin_complaints.php     # List all complaints for admin
│   ├── admin_action_complaint.php # Admin resolve/escalate complaint
│   ├── admin_action_listing.php # Admin delete listing
│   ├── alter_db_interactions.php # One-time DB migration (seeking_responses + notifications tables)
│   └── reset_db.php             # Dev only — truncates all tables + seeds master admin
├── database/
│   ├── schema.sql               # Full MySQL schema (19 tables)
│   ├── seed.sql                 # Optional sample data
│   └── seed.php                 # PHP seeder script
├── docs/
│   ├── system_architecture.md   # Technical architecture overview
│   ├── walkthrough.md           # Feature implementation log
│   ├── changelog_vs_report.md   # Deviations from original academic ERD
│   ├── implementation_plan.md   # Current/past dev plan
│   └── task.md                  # Dev task checklist
├── uploads/                     # User-uploaded files (gitignored)
│   ├── listings/
│   ├── items/
│   ├── verifications/
│   └── profiles/
├── admin.html                   # Admin dashboard (admin-only)
├── bills.html                   # Mess bill manager
├── dashboard.html               # User dashboard (listings, offers, watchlist, bills)
├── exchange.html                # Marketplace browse
├── index.html                   # Home / landing page
├── item-detail.html             # Single marketplace item view
├── listing-detail.html          # Single housing listing view
├── listings.html                # Housing listings browse
├── login.html                   # Login page
├── profile.html                 # Profile + preferences + verification
├── register.html                # Registration page
├── seeking.html                 # Looking For posts
├── app.js                       # Core JS: nav, auth, localStorage, utilities
├── data.js                      # Static seed/fallback data
├── style.css                    # Global design system
└── .gitignore

Developer Documentation

For teammates and future developers, the docs/ folder contains up-to-date architectural notes:

• docs/system_architecture.md — Technical overview of the frontend Chrome system, database schema, API flows, and feature algorithms.
• docs/walkthrough.md — Log of all major completed implementations and what changed.

Note for AI Assistants

If you are using an AI assistant to help build this project, instruct it to read docs/system_architecture.md and docs/walkthrough.md to instantly understand the backend architecture and history of changes.