What is this all about?

watermoviemelon is a fun, interactive web application designed to bring friends, family, and movie lovers together to organize unforgettable movie nights! It makes planning and hosting movie events a breeze. Users can create a movie night, add movie options, and let the app randomly select a film for the evening—keeping the suspense alive until showtime! Once the night ends, everyone can rate the film!

Key Features:

• Event Creation: Easily set up movie nights or join to the existing one.
• Movie List Management: Add movies to a global list shared across all movie nights. Once a film is added, it remains in the pool, keeping the options fresh and interesting for future events until it's finally selected!
• Random Movie Selector: Let watermoviemelon randomly pick a movie from the curated list, adding a touch of excitement to each night.
• Rating System: Rate the film after the event to capture everyone's opinions and build a record of past movie nights.
• Account Statistics: Keep track of your movie-night stats! Check out how many movie nights you've hosted, how many you've watched and many more!
• Automated Movie Selection: The system automatically selects movies for upcoming movie nights using a built-in cron job that runs every minute.

Project structure

.
├── backend                # Backend service (e.g., API, database models)
│   ├── ...            
│   ├── Dockerfile         # Docker configuration for the backend
│   ├── movies             # Application directory for managing movie-related features
│   ├── requirements.txt   # Python dependencies
│   └── watermoviemelon    # Project configuration and main app settings for backend
│
├── compose.yaml           # Docker Compose configuration for orchestrating services
│
├── frontend               # Frontend service (React application)
│   ├── ...               
│   ├── Dockerfile         # Docker configuration for the frontend   
│   ├── public             # Public assets, like icons and images
│   └── src                # Source code, organized by components, pages, utilities, etc.
├── ...                
└── README.md              # Project documentation

How to run

Prerequisites

Before running the app, ensure that you have the following installed:

• Docker: Required for running the application using Docker containers. Get Docker
• Docker Compose: Used to manage multi-container applications. Get Docker Compose
• Node.js: For the frontend to work locally. Get Node.js
• Python 3.x: Required for the backend. Get Python

Environment variables

To make sure your application can access required APIs and other configurations, set up environment variables by creating a .env file in each relevant directory.

Frontend

1. Create a .env file in the root directory

cd frontend
touch .env

2. Add required environment variables:

# OMDb API Key for fetching movie details
VITE_OMDB_API_KEY="OMDB_KEY_HERE"

Backend

1. Create a .env file in the backend directory:

cd backend
touch .env

2. Add required environment variables:

# PostgreSQL database configuration
POSTGRES_DB=your_db_name
POSTGRES_USER=your_db_user
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your_db_password
POSTGRES_HOST=db

# For register view rate limiting
RATE_LIMIT_ENABLED=True

# Business timezone for consistent day-boundary logic (optional)
# Used for movie night scheduling and conflict detection
# Default: Europe/Warsaw
BUSINESS_TIMEZONE=Europe/Warsaw

Docker-compose

To run the application using docker compose simply navigate to the water-movie-melon project directory in terminal. Then type:

docker compose up

App will start, you can connect locally to the frontend at http://localhost:4173, and to the backend at http://localhost:8000.

Automated Movie Selection

The application includes an automated movie selection system that runs in a separate cron container. This feature:

• Automatically selects movies for upcoming movie nights that are within 1 minute of their start time
• Runs every minute to ensure timely movie selection
• Prevents duplicate selections by checking if a movie has already been selected for a night
• Logs all activities to /tmp/movie_selection.log within the cron container

The cron service is automatically started when you run docker compose up -d. You can view the selection logs by accessing the cron container:

docker compose logs -f cron

Cron Service Management

The cron service runs in its own container for better separation of concerns:

• View cron logs: docker compose logs -f cron
• Restart cron service: docker compose restart cron
• Access cron container: docker compose exec cron bash
• Run cron job manually (for testing): docker compose exec cron python manage.py select_movie_for_nights

This architecture provides better resource management and easier debugging by isolating scheduled tasks from the web server.

Local Development

Frontend

1. navigate to the frontend folder:

cd watermoviemelon/frontend

2. Install dependencies using npm or yarn:

If you're using npm

npm install

Or if you prefer yarn:

yarn install

3. Start the development server:

If you're using npm:

npm run dev

Or with yarn:

yarn dev

4. The app should now be running locally at http://localhost:5173. You can make changes to the source code, and the development server will automatically reload the page.
5. To stop the server, use Ctrl+C in your terminal.

Backend

1. navigate to the backend folder:

cd watermoviemelon/backend

2. Create and activate a virtual environment (recommended for managing Python dependencies)::

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows use: venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install backend dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Run database migrations (if applicable):

python manage.py migrate

5. Start the backend server

python manage.py runserver

6. The backend will now be running locally on http://localhost:8000. You can make changes to the backend code, and the server will automatically reload when saved.

7. To stop the server, use Ctrl+C in your terminal.

Frontend (docker)

To run frontend of the app using docker first navigate to the water-movie-melon/frontend directory in terminal. Then build the image using:

docker build . -t {frontend_image_name}

And next run the docker:

docker run -p 4173:4173 {frontend_image_name}

Backend (docker)

To run backend of the app using docker first navigate to the water-movie-melon/backend directory in terminal. Then build the image using:

docker build . -t {backend_image_name}

And next run the docker:

docker run -p 8000:8000 {backend_image_name}

Database (docker)

To start database using docker run this command in terminal:

docker run -d --name postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mypassword  -p 5432:5432 postgres

Unit tests

Backend

The backend uses Django's built-in testing framework along with pytest (if configured) for more flexibility. Here's how to run the backend tests:

1. Navigate to the backend directory:

cd watermoviemelon/backend

2. Activate the virtual environment (if using a manual setup):

source venv/bin/activate # On Windows use: venv\Scripts\activate

3. Run all test cases by executing:

python manage.py test

Authors

• LissaGreense
• adlbrtbsr
• kajedot