add documentation about meteor and lcs documentation

Author: mjrb

HOWITWORKS.md

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+# How it works
+This is a more detailed documentation of how meteor works, and how
+the code we added interacts with helpq, and allows integration with LCS
+
+## Meteor
+Meteor is a framework for doing both frontend and backend development
+in JavaScript. The meteor server accomplishes this by two means:
+
+### Methods
+these are effectively like api requests. a client can call a method with
+Meteor.call and that communicates with the server to call serverside code.
+methods are added with Meteor.methods
+
+### Collections
+Meteor also gives you a conduit to directly query the MongoDB database from
+the client. This is built on a websocket type interface so when you update a
+collection it can push the changes out to all the clients that are watching it.
+users don't have access to the whole database though. you manually configure
+what users can and can't do with documents. this allows meteor to be secure and
+is also why methods are needed for when a user needs someone with special
+permission (like the server) to do something for them.
+
+## LCS integration
+On startup and for login, the server will contact LCS over HTTP to get user data
+and to validate passwords. in server/lib/lcs.js there is a function that takes in
+the config and adds all the LCS functionality to helpq. things like:
+- dynamically getting the floor plan image to display to the user
+  + this is so there is a single source of truth so if the floor plan changes
+    we don't have to rebuild/redeploy a bunch of applications that use this
+- get the names of all available locations on the map.
+  + this is only updated at start time, but is done for all the reasons above
+  + this can get fixed using something like fetch in the client and passing the
+    client the endpoint from config
+- LCS login
+  + on every login helpq asks if a username and pass is valid. if it isn't it checks
+    to see if the user was added manually
+    + if a user was valid it changes their password/creates their account in helpq
+- checking user roles in LCS
+  + the first time a user logs in it will check to see if they have the mentor role
+    in LCS. if they do it also gives them the appropriate role in helpq

README.md

@@ -3,7 +3,9 @@
 ## Description
 this is a configuration and extension of MIT's helpq specifically for HackRU
 the main idea is to integrate it with lcs and other HackRU type things
-the [HELPq readme](HELPQ.md) may give some more insight on HELPq specifically
+the [HELPq readme](HELPQ.md) may give some more insight on HELPq specifically.
+for more information about meteor and how this fork integrates with LCS see
+[how it works](HOWITWORKS.md)
 
 ## Inspiration
 Originally we used a slackbot in order to provide mentorship to hackers during