This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Shravan Bobade
🎮 MovieNest Gets a Mood Ring: Recommending Films with Weather, Time & Tears
So I was staring out my window one rainy night, thinking:
“Wouldn’t it be cool if my app felt the vibe and showed me a romantic thriller?”
And that’s how I spiraled into turning my chill movie app into a mood-sensing, AI-powered, vibe-aware recommender system.
Spoiler: The mood logic was easier than the geolocation permission denial logic.
🔧 Goal: Make MovieNest Feel Emotions (Kind Of)
This update was all about personalization. I wanted the app to:
- Detect the current weather and time
- Guess your mood from that combo (like a fortune teller... but with JavaScript)
- Recommend movies that match that vibe
Also:
- Handle permission denial gracefully (not by throwing an error and dying 😵)
- Keep everything snappy with virtual scroll + debounce
🧠 The (Questionable) AI Logic
Step 1: Mood Detection
I hooked into OpenWeather’s API + good ol’ Date() and assigned moods like:
- Rainy Night → Romantic Thriller 🌧️🌙
- Sunny Morning → Feel-Good Comedy ☕☀️
- Foggy Afternoon → Mystery Drama 🕵️♀️
Basically, my app is now a softboi who asks,
*"Are you okay? Here's a comfort film."
Step 2: Mood → Genre
I made a neat moodGenreMapping object:
{
feelgood: [35, 10751], // Comedy, Family
cozy: [10749, 18], // Romance, Drama
adventure: [12, 28], // Adventure, Action
mystery: [9648, 53], // Mystery, Thriller
}
So each mood maps to TMDB genres — and my app fetches them dynamically.
Step 3: Smart Fetching Flow
If you allow location:
→ Weather + Time → Mood → Genre → Movies
If you deny location (you rebel):
→ Time-only Mood → Genre → Movies
If you search manually:
→ I shut up and show you what you want.
And just to be polite, I added a 🧠 Mood Explanation Banner —
“It’s raining in your area at night, so here’s a romantic thriller.”
Because transparency matters. Even in movie logic.
😮😴 Challenges, AKA “Why Am I Like This?”
❌ Weather API 401
I foolishly used OpenWeather's fancy 3.0 OneCall endpoint.
Turns out, that one costs real money 😭
So I switched to a free and functional endpoint. Budget dev life.
📍 No Location? No Problem.
I realized users could deny geolocation (how dare they), and I wasn’t handling it.
Now I fallback like a champion:\
→ Just use the time and pretend we know the weather 🕰️✨
♻ Infinite Fetch Bug
Forgot to reset the pagination page when a new mood or search triggered.
The app said, “More movies! More!”
I said, “Please stop.”
It now stops.
🤖 Mood Mapping Misfire
I passed the time directly into moodGenreMapping like a rookie.
What I needed was:
getMoodFromContext(weather, time) → mood → genres
Fixed it.
Cried a bit.
📱 Mobile Geolocation Weirdness
Some mobile devices didn’t even ask for permission.
Added logs and tested denial flow manually. (Felt like QA. Still unemployed.)
🚀 The Final Vibe
Now MovieNest can do this:
It’s raining in Mumbai at night?
→ You get romantic thrillers. 💖🕵️♂️It’s sunny in Paris?
→ Boom, comedies and feel-goods. ☀️😂Denied location?
→ It’s cool. We’ll guess. We’re chill like that.
🌈 What’s Next?
I’m building in public — crying in private. Here's what’s coming up:
- 🎞️ Collaborative watchlists
- 🔊 Voice-based search
- 🤖 Better mood prediction using AI (GPT meets weather forecast??)
🧩 Try It Out
Live App: https://shravandev.com/movienest\
Blog 1: Proxy, Debounce & Glassmorphism\
Blog 2: Virtual Scroll + Lazy Loading
Thanks for scrolling through my chaos.
If your app isn’t emotional yet…
Are you even building full-stack? 😌
Built with care, mood swings, and navigator.geolocation —
Shravan 💻🍿
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Shravan Bobade
Shravan Bobade | Sciencx (2025-06-27T18:18:49+00:00) MovieNest Gets a Mood Ring: Recommending Films with Weather, Time & Tears. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/06/27/movienest-gets-a-mood-ring-recommending-films-with-weather-time-tears/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.