Cross-origin authentication
Enforce CSRF protection while using secure cookies across frontend and backend origins.
Project 02
CineMind
Personalized movie discovery platform with a Django REST backend, secure cookie authentication, weighted user preference modeling, resilient external API handling, and automated Azure deployment.
- Django REST Framework
- PostgreSQL
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- TMDB API
- Groq
- GitHub Actions
- Microsoft Azure
Year: 2024
Overview
CineMind combines TMDB movie data with PostgreSQL-backed ratings and watchlists through a Django REST Framework API. A weighted user preference profile informs personalized movie discovery.
HTTP-only authentication cookies, CSRF protection, per-user data isolation, and endpoint-specific throttling protect user interactions. TMDB timeout/error handling and Groq model fallback support external integrations; GitHub Actions verifies and deploys the backend to Azure App Service.
Engineering Highlights
- Combined TMDB movie data with persisted user interactions in a Django REST API.
- Built a weighted taste profile from ratings and saved/watchlist behavior.
- Implemented HTTP-only authentication cookies with CSRF enforcement.
- Added per-user data isolation and endpoint-specific throttling.
- Handled TMDB failures and Groq provider requests with model fallback.
- Built GitHub Actions verification and deployment workflows for Azure.
Architecture
- Next.js
- Django REST API
- Authentication / CSRF / Throttling
- Recommendation Logic
- PostgreSQL
- TMDB
- Groq
Deployment: GitHub Actions ? Azure App Service
Technical Challenges
User data isolation
Keep ratings and watchlists scoped to the authenticated account.
Activity-based recommendations
Use persisted ratings and watchlist behavior to model user preferences.
External service failures
Handle TMDB timeouts and AI provider failures with fallback behavior.
Reliability & Testing
- Automated tests
- Django deployment checks
- Migration checks
- Ruff lint and format checks
- pip-audit dependency auditing
- TMDB request timeouts
- AI model fallback
- Azure deployment gate
Screenshots
