Movies Diary

A self-hosted, server-side rendered movie logging system with a full REST API. Built in Rust — no JavaScript in the HTML interface, just HTML forms and an RSS feed. Designed to run as a lightweight widget embedded on a personal site or as a backend for third-party clients.

Features

• Log movies with a TMDB/OMDb ID or manual title/year/director, with a 0–5 rating
• Immutable append-only viewing ledger (tracks re-watches)
• Background poster fetching and storage (local filesystem or S3-compatible)
• Movie enrichment via TMDb — full cast, crew, genres, keywords, runtime, budget/revenue, ratings; fetched automatically on movie discovery and refreshed every 30 days; exposed via GET /api/v1/movies/{id}/profile
• Full-text search across movies and people via GET /api/v1/search — free-text query plus structured filters (genre, year, person, department, language); backed by SQLite FTS5 or PostgreSQL tsvector + GIN indexes
• People as first-class entities — browse by person via GET /api/v1/people/{id} and full credit history via GET /api/v1/people/{id}/credits; index populated automatically during TMDb enrichment
• RSS/Atom feed for public subscription (global and per-user)
• JWT authentication via cookie (HTML) or Bearer token (REST API)
• ActivityPub federation — follow/unfollow remote users, accept/reject/remove followers, federated reviews broadcast as Note objects with #MoviesDiary + #MovieTitle hashtags, paginated outbox, boost/Announce tracking, NodeInfo discovery endpoint, shared inbox delivery, actor profile sync (bio, avatar, discoverable)
• Federation moderation — instance-level domain blocking (admin-managed), per-user actor blocking with Block activity, delivery filter excludes blocked actors and blocked-domain inboxes
• Watchlist — add movies to watch later, per-user; federated watchlist entries visible for remote actors
• User profiles — display name, bio, avatar, banner, custom profile fields; editable via HTML settings page or REST API
• Jellyfin/Plex auto-import — media server sends a webhook on playback stop, movies land in a watch queue; review and confirm with a rating to create diary entries; per-user webhook tokens with SHA-256 auth; setup UI at /settings/integrations
• CSV and JSON diary export
• File importer: upload CSV, TSV, JSON, or XLSX from any source (Letterboxd, IMDb, etc.), map columns to domain fields via a step-by-step wizard or REST API, save mapping profiles for repeat imports
• REST API v1 (/api/v1/) with full feature parity with the HTML interface
• OpenAPI documentation at /docs (Swagger UI) and /scalar (Scalar)
• CSRF protection on all HTML form routes (double-submit cookie, defense-in-depth on top of SameSite=Strict)
• Per-IP rate limiting via token bucket (production-grade, backed by axum-governor)
• Terminal UI client (crates/tui) for logging reviews, bulk CSV import, and diary browsing

Architecture

Hexagonal (Ports & Adapters) with Domain-Driven Design:

api-types           — shared REST API request/response DTOs (Serialize/Deserialize + utoipa schemas); used by presentation and tui
domain              — pure types and trait definitions, no external deps
application         — use cases (commands + queries), business logic orchestration; handlers delegate here for all domain logic
presentation        — Axum HTTP router, OpenAPI spec assembly, Swagger UI + Scalar serving, composition root for the HTTP process
worker              — standalone worker binary (event consumer, poster sync, federation)
adapters/
  auth                 — JWT issuance and validation (Argon2 passwords)
  sqlite               — SQLite repository + connection factory
  postgres             — PostgreSQL repository + connection factory
  metadata             — TMDB / OMDb HTTP client
  poster-fetcher       — downloads poster images
  image-storage        — stores images (posters + user avatars) on local filesystem or S3-compatible storage
  poster-sync          — event handler: triggers poster fetch+store on MovieDiscovered
  image-converter      — optional background worker: converts stored images to AVIF or WebP; backfills existing images via a 24h periodic job
  tmdb-enrichment      — event handler: fetches full movie profile (cast, crew, genres, keywords, box office) from TMDb on MovieEnrichmentRequested; resolves IMDb IDs automatically
  template-askama      — Askama HTML rendering
  rss                  — RSS/Atom feed generation
  export               — CSV and JSON diary serialization
  importer             — CSV/TSV/JSON/XLSX parser and column mapper for bulk import
  jellyfin             — Jellyfin webhook payload parser (MediaServerParser adapter)
  plex                 — Plex webhook payload parser (MediaServerParser adapter; requires Plex Pass)
  event-payload        — shared event serialization DTOs (used by all event bus adapters)
  sqlite-event-queue   — durable polling event queue backed by SQLite
  postgres-event-queue — durable polling event queue backed by PostgreSQL
  nats                 — NATS Core / JetStream event publisher and consumer
  event-publisher      — in-memory event channel (used in tests)
  activitypub          — ActivityPub federation adapter (follow, inbox/outbox, actor); delegates to k-ap for protocol internals
  sqlite-search        — SQLite FTS5 implementation of SearchPort + SearchCommand
  postgres-search      — PostgreSQL tsvector + GIN implementation of SearchPort + SearchCommand
  sqlite-federation    — SQLite-backed federation repository
  postgres-federation  — PostgreSQL-backed federation repository
tui                 — terminal UI client (ratatui); shares api-types with presentation for typed API access

Prerequisites

• Rust (stable, 2024 edition)
• SQLite
• Poster storage: local filesystem (zero deps) or an S3-compatible object store (e.g. MinIO)
• An OMDb API key

Environment Variables

A .env.example file is provided at the repo root — copy it to .env and fill in your values.

# Database
DATABASE_URL=sqlite://movies.db

# Authentication
JWT_SECRET=change-me

# OMDb metadata
OMDB_API_KEY=your-key

# TMDb metadata + enrichment (optional — enables full cast/crew/genre data)
# TMDB_API_KEY=your-key

# Public base URL (used for ActivityPub actor URLs and canonical links)
BASE_URL=https://yourdomain.example.com

# Image storage — pick one backend:

# Option A: local filesystem (zero deps)
IMAGE_STORAGE_BACKEND=local
IMAGE_STORAGE_PATH=./images

# Option B: S3-compatible (MinIO, AWS S3, etc.)
# IMAGE_STORAGE_BACKEND=s3
# MINIO_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:9000
# MINIO_BUCKET=posters
# MINIO_REGION=minio
# MINIO_ACCESS_KEY_ID=minioadmin
# MINIO_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=minioadmin

# Image conversion (optional — converts stored images to AVIF or WebP to save space)
# IMAGE_CONVERSION_ENABLED=false
# IMAGE_CONVERSION_FORMAT=avif   # avif or webp

# Optional
HOST=0.0.0.0
PORT=3000
RATE_LIMIT=60           # requests per minute per IP (default: 60)
ALLOW_REGISTRATION=true # set to false to disable new sign-ups
SECURE_COOKIES=true     # set when serving over HTTPS
RUST_LOG=presentation=info,tower_http=info,worker=info,application=info

# Event bus — "db" (default, uses same database) or "nats"
EVENT_BUS_BACKEND=db
# NATS_URL=nats://localhost:4222   # required when EVENT_BUS_BACKEND=nats

The worker binary must run alongside presentation to process events:

cargo run -p worker

Run

cargo run -p presentation   # HTTP server (0.0.0.0:3000)
cargo run -p worker         # event worker (poster sync, in a separate terminal)

The worker polls the event queue and must run alongside the presentation to process background tasks like poster fetching. Both processes share the same database.

API

All REST endpoints are under /api/v1/. Authentication uses Authorization: Bearer <token> obtained from POST /api/v1/auth/login.

Interactive API documentation is available at runtime:

• Swagger UI — http://localhost:3000/docs
• Scalar — http://localhost:3000/scalar

Terminal UI

cargo run -p tui

Supports review logging, bulk CSV import (column order matches the export format), and diary browsing with review history.

Development

A Makefile wraps the most common dev commands:

make           # default: fmt-check + clippy + test (same order as CI)
make fix       # auto-apply fmt + clippy fixes
make fmt       # apply rustfmt
make clippy    # clippy with -D warnings
make test      # cargo test

Test

cargo test           # full workspace (requires DATABASE_URL for sqlx offline checks)
cargo test -p application   # domain-level unit tests only — no database required

The application crate has unit tests for core use cases backed by in-memory fakes from domain's test-helpers feature. These run without a database and are the fastest feedback loop for business logic changes.

Docker

The image contains both presentation (HTTP server) and worker (event processor). Run them as separate containers sharing the same data volume:

# Build (SQLite + federation + NATS support)
docker build -t movies-diary \
  --build-arg FEATURES=sqlite,sqlite-federation,nats .

# HTTP server
docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -e DATABASE_URL=sqlite:///data/movies.db \
  -e JWT_SECRET=change-me \
  -e OMDB_API_KEY=your-key \
  -e BASE_URL=https://yourdomain.example.com \
  -e EVENT_BUS_BACKEND=nats \
  -e NATS_URL=nats://nats:4222 \
  -v $(pwd)/data:/data \
  movies-diary

# Event worker (separate container, same image)
docker run \
  -e DATABASE_URL=sqlite:///data/movies.db \
  -e JWT_SECRET=change-me \
  -e OMDB_API_KEY=your-key \
  -e BASE_URL=https://yourdomain.example.com \
  -e EVENT_BUS_BACKEND=nats \
  -e NATS_URL=nats://nats:4222 \
  -v $(pwd)/data:/data \
  --entrypoint ./worker \
  movies-diary

To build for PostgreSQL: --build-arg FEATURES=postgres,postgres-federation,nats

Media Server Integration

Auto-log movies you finish watching. Go to /settings/integrations to generate a webhook token, then configure your media server.

Jellyfin

1. Install the Webhook plugin (Dashboard > Plugins > Catalog)
2. Add a Generic destination:
   • URL: https://yourdomain.example.com/api/v1/webhooks/jellyfin
   • Header: Authorization = Bearer <your-token>
   • Send All Properties: enabled
   • Notification Type: Playback Stop only
   • Item Type: Movies only

Plex (requires Plex Pass)

1. Go to Settings > Webhooks in your Plex server
2. Add webhook URL: https://yourdomain.example.com/api/v1/webhooks/plex
3. Plex does not support custom headers natively — pass the token as a query param: https://yourdomain.example.com/api/v1/webhooks/plex?token=<your-token>

Movies you finish watching appear in your watch queue at /watch-queue — rate and confirm to add to your diary.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE.