Local Development

Local Development

Requirements

• Node.js 20.6 or newer. Check with node --version. If you see command not found, install it with brew install node or download the LTS installer from nodejs.org.
• A TMDB account with an API Read Access Token.

Setup

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/archcoder-jd/Fadeout.git
   cd Fadeout

2. Create a file named .env in the project folder:

   TMDB_TOKEN=your-read-access-token
   

   Use the long token starting with eyJ, with no quotes and no spaces around =.
3. Start the proxy:

   node --env-file=.env server/app.js

   No output means it started correctly. It keeps running and waits for requests until you press Ctrl + C.
4. Open http://localhost:3000/tmdb/trending/movie/day in a browser. You should see movie data as JSON.

If you change .env, stop the server and start it again, since it only reads the file at startup.

Checking for errors before deploying

Running node server/app.js is the quickest way to catch mistakes in the proxy. If there's a problem, Node stops with an error message and a line number straight away, so you don't have to deploy to find out.

Limitation

The front-end pages request /api/tmdb/... from the same domain they're served from. A basic static server, such as VS Code's Live Server, doesn't provide that route, so movie data won't load when the pages are opened that way. Use the live site to test the full app.