The holiday season is a time for joy, family, and of course, movies! With so many classics and new releases to choose from, how do you decide which ones to watch? Our solution: a simple “Holiday Movie Ranking” app. Let’s take a high-level look at how we put it together.
Ideation and Goal Setting:
The main idea was straightforward: allow users to add their favorite holiday movies and vote for them. The top-voted movies would rise to the top of the list.
Tech Stack Selection:
- Backend: Firebase serves as the backbone of our backend services. It’s a comprehensive app development platform that simplifies many operations necessary for modern web applications. We’ve used Firebase Firestore, a NoSQL database more specifically, it’s a document-oriented database that offers flexible, scalable database for mobile, web, and server development, to store and sync our app’s data in real-time..
- Frontend: At the heart of our application’s client-side, we have React, a library for building user interfaces with a focus on declarative rendering and component-based architecture. It allows us to create a dynamic and responsive experience for users. Alongside, we’ve utilized modern JavaScript (ES6+) for its syntactic sugar, making our code more readable and easier to maintain. And then we styled our app with some flashy CSS for some holiday bling.
How the App Works:
- Upon landing on our app, users are greeted with a list of holiday movies, each with a vote button. Leveraging React’s state management, the app tracks and limits each user to five votes without requiring authentication – a session-based approach to ensure simplicity and accessibility. When a user casts a vote, the Firestore database is updated, and thanks to its real-time capabilities, all users viewing the app see the updated vote counts and list ranking instantly.
- The movies are sorted by the number of votes, ensuring the most popular movie is always celebrated at the top of the list. It’s a seamless blend of front-end interactivity with backend reliability.
See the App in Action:
Below we have embedded our holiday movie ranking app for your review.
To see the app in its full glory click here.
All done… ..not:
It felt like a stopping point, and then more inspiration hit. So, onward with continuing the development journey of the “Holiday Movie Ranking” app, let’s delve into the integration of various APIs and advanced React libraries that have elevated the app’s functionality and user experience.
Integration of APIs
OMDB API: To enrich our app with comprehensive movie information, we’ve integrated the OMDB API among others. These added a layer of depth to each movie listing, providing users with details like movie plots, casts, and ratings.
Trailer Links: Leveraging the various APIs, we’re able to embed movie trailers in the app. This feature allows users to get a quick glimpse of the movies before casting their votes.
Streaming Provider Links: Understanding the need for easy access, the app includes direct links to streaming platforms where the movies can be watched. This seamless integration offers a convenient experience for users looking to plan their holiday movie marathon.
Advanced React Libraries
React-Spring: To enhance the visual appeal, we’ve utilized React-Spring. This library allows for spring-physics based animations, giving a more dynamic and fluid feel to our UI elements.
React-Infinite Scroll: Considering the potentially extensive list of holiday movies, React-Infinite Scroll helps in efficiently loading movie data. This offers a better user experience, especially when dealing with a large number of entries.
PropTypes: For better maintenance and readability, we’ve incorporated PropTypes. This is instrumental in validating the types of props passed across different components, ensuring the reliability of data flow within the app.
Continuous Refactoring
Clarity and Readability: A key part of our development process is the ongoing refactoring of components. This is crucial for maintaining clarity and readability in our codebase, making it easier for new contributors to understand and for the team to manage updates.
Evolving Roadmap
Future Implementations (Fuse.js): The roadmap for our app continues to evolve. One of the upcoming features includes the integration of Fuse.js for implementing a fuzzy search mechanism. This will allow users to search for movies in a more forgiving and intuitive manner.
Continuous Learning: Each step in the app’s development has been a learning adventure. From tackling frontend challenges with React to integrating backend services with Firebase, the journey has been as enriching as it has been educational.
Final Thoughts
While the “Holiday Movie Ranking” app is still a work in progress, each phase of its development underlines the importance of adaptability and continuous learning in the field of software development. It’s an exciting journey, filled with both challenges and triumphs, and we’re eager to see how the app evolves further. So, as we continue to build and improve, we ask: which holiday movie are you voting for?
We hope this provides a concise yet informative overview of our app-building journey! If you’d like more details on any specific part, just let us know.