WatchSense

WatchSense is a movie discovery app built with Laravel and Livewire. It pulls film data from TMDb, lets users explore trending titles, inspect movie details, save likes, and surface recommendations based on taste signals like genre, cast, director, and user activity.

At A Glance

What it does	Why it matters
Browse trending and searchable movies	Quickly find something worth watching
View rich movie details	See cast, crew, language, and ratings in one place
Like movies and build a profile	Make recommendations feel more personal
Use weighted recommendation logic	Blend multiple signals instead of relying on one factor

Highlights

• TMDb-powered landing page with trending content
• Auth flow for register, login, and logout
• Movie gallery for browsing and search
• Movie detail experience with cast, crew, and language metadata
• Like and unlike support for signed-in users
• Weighted recommendation engine for related titles
• Database-backed storage for users, films, genres, actors, reviews, and likes

Tech Stack

• Laravel 12
• Livewire 4
• PHP 8.2+
• Vite
• Tailwind CSS 4
• MySQL or another Laravel-supported database

What You Need

• PHP 8.2 or newer
• Composer
• Node.js and npm
• A database server
• TMDb API key

Quick Start

1. Install dependencies.

composer install
npm install

2. Prepare the environment file.

copy .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

3. Fill in the required values.

APP_KEY=base64:...
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_DATABASE=watchsense
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=
TMDB_API_KEY=your_tmdb_api_key

4. Create the tables.

php artisan migrate

5. Run the app.

npm run dev
php artisan serve

If you prefer one command for local development, use:

composer run dev

Notes

• The app expects TMDB_API_KEY to be set before movie features will work properly.
• If changes in .env do not seem to apply, run php artisan config:clear.
• The default seeder creates a test user account for local testing.

Project Layout

• app/Http/Controllers contains the gallery and authentication controllers.
• app/Livewire contains the movie detail and recommendation components.
• app/Services/RecommendationService.php handles weighted recommendation logic.
• database/migrations contains the schema for films, genres, actors, reviews, and likes.
• resources/views contains the Blade views for the UI.

License

This project uses the MIT license.