CINETRACKER

A social movie-tracking platform where users can log, rate, and share the films they've watched. CINETRACKER combines personal film statistics with community features and a gamified achievements system.

---

Features

Authentication & Security

• Email/password sign-up with 6-digit email verification
• JWT authentication via secure HTTP-only cookies
• Password reset via email (1-hour token)
• Google reCAPTCHA v3 on sign-up and password reset
• Guest login for instant demo access without registration

Movie Management

• Live TMDB search to add films to your library
• 5-star personal rating and watch-date tracking
• Edit or delete films (cascades to related posts & activity entries)

Custom Lists

• Create and name personal film collections
• Add or remove movies from any list

Social Features

• Friend system: send, accept, decline, and remove friends via privacy-safe custom IDs (not internal MongoDB IDs)
• Browse a friend's film library and activity feed

Posts & Reviews

• Write film reviews with title, description, and rating
• Like and comment on posts
• Global and user-scoped post feed

Statistics

• Total films watched, combined runtime, average rating
• Best and worst films overall and by year
• Genre distribution with percentage breakdown
• Year-based filter across all stats

Achievements

• Genre-based and quantity-based badges
• Multi-tier difficulty levels
• Unlock tracking with timestamps

---

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 18, Vite 6, Chakra UI 2, Zustand 5, React Router 7, Framer Motion
Backend	Node.js, Express 4, MongoDB (Mongoose 8)
Auth	JWT + HTTP-only cookies, bcryptjs
File Uploads	Multer, Cloudinary SDK
Email	Mailtrap
External APIs	TMDB, OMDB, Google reCAPTCHA v3

---

Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• MongoDB Atlas account (or local MongoDB)
• Accounts for: TMDB, OMDB, Mailtrap, Cloudinary, Google reCAPTCHA

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/your-username/cinetracker.git
cd cinetracker

# Install backend dependencies
npm install

# Install frontend dependencies
npm install --prefix frontend

Environment Variables

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your credentials:

cp .env.example .env

Variable	Description
MONGO_URI	MongoDB connection string
JWT_SECRET	Strong random string for JWT signing
TMDB_API_KEY	API key from themoviedb.org
OMDB_API_KEY	API key from omdbapi.com
MAILTRAP_TOKEN	Mailtrap API token for transactional emails
CLOUDINARY_*	Cloudinary cloud name, API key, and secret
GOOGLE_WEBSITE_TOKEN	reCAPTCHA v3 site key (public)
GOOGLE_SECRET_KEY	reCAPTCHA v3 secret key (server-side only)
CLIENT_URL	Frontend URL for CORS (e.g. http://localhost:5173)
PORT	Backend port (default: 5000)

Running Locally

# Start backend (with nodemon)
npm run dev

# Start frontend (in a separate terminal)
cd frontend && npm run dev

Production Build

npm run build   # builds the frontend into /frontend/dist
npm run start   # serves frontend + API from Express

---

Project Structure

cinetracker/
├── backend/
│   ├── config/         # Database connection
│   ├── controllers/    # Route handlers
│   ├── mailtrap/       # Email templates & config
│   ├── middleware/     # Auth, reCAPTCHA, file validation
│   ├── models/         # Mongoose schemas
│   ├── routes/         # Express routers
│   └── server.js
├── frontend/
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/
│       ├── pages/
│       ├── store/      # Zustand stores
│       └── modules/
├── .env.example
└── package.json

---

Database

8 MongoDB collections: User, Movie, Post, Comment, Update, List, Achievement, UserAchievement

---

License

MIT