Lesson 3: Movie Database Blueprint with OMDB API

Movie Database Feature Overview

The movies blueprint allows users to:

• Add movies by title (e.g., "Dances with Wolves")
• Fetch complete movie data from OMDB API (director, actors, plot, poster image)
• View detailed movie information with images
• Edit movie information
• Delete movies from the database

Example: Add "Dances with Wolves", click "Fetch Data", and it will populate director (Kevin Costner), year, plot, and poster image automatically.

Database Schema

Create a movies table with the following columns:

• movie_id: Integer, Primary Key, Auto-increment
• title: Text (e.g., 'Dances with Wolves')
• director: Text (e.g., 'Kevin Costner')
• year: Text or Integer (release year)
• plot: Text (movie synopsis)
• poster: Text (URL to poster image)
• actors: Text (comma-separated list of actors)
• genre: Text (movie genre)

Blueprint Routes

Your movies blueprint should have these routes:

@movies_bp.route('/movies')
def index():
    # Display all movies

@movies_bp.route('/movies/add', methods=['POST'])
def add_movie():
    # Add movie with just the title

@movies_bp.route('/movies/fetch/<int:movie_id>')
def fetch_data(movie_id):
    # Fetch data from OMDB API and update

@movies_bp.route('/movies/view/<int:movie_id>')
def view_movie(movie_id):
    # View detailed movie information

@movies_bp.route('/movies/edit/<int:movie_id>', methods=['GET', 'POST'])
def edit_movie(movie_id):
    # Edit movie information

@movies_bp.route('/movies/delete/<int:movie_id>')
def delete_movie(movie_id):
    # Delete movie from database

OMDB API Integration

The OMDB (Open Movie Database) API provides detailed movie information:

• Free API Key: Get one at omdbapi.com
• Data Returned: Title, Year, Director, Actors, Plot, Poster, Genre, Ratings

Example API call to fetch movie data:

import requests

def get_movie_data(title):
    api_key = 'YOUR_OMDB_API_KEY'
    url = 'http://www.omdbapi.com/'
    params = {
        'apikey': api_key,
        't': title  # Search by title
    }
    response = requests.get(url, params=params)
    data = response.json()
    
    if data.get('Response') == 'True':
        return {
            'title': data.get('Title'),
            'director': data.get('Director'),
            'year': data.get('Year'),
            'plot': data.get('Plot'),
            'poster': data.get('Poster'),
            'actors': data.get('Actors'),
            'genre': data.get('Genre')
        }
    return None

Form Implementation

Create a simple form to add movies by title:

<form action="/movies/add" method="POST">
    <input type="text" name="title" 
           placeholder="Movie Title (e.g., Dances with Wolves)" 
           required>
    <button type="submit">Add Movie</button>
</form>

Initially, only the title is saved. Users click "Fetch Data" to populate other fields from the API.

View Movie Page

The view page should display:

• Movie poster image
• Title and year
• Director and actors
• Plot/synopsis
• Genre

Note: The demo mentions this can be "a little bit buggy" - make sure to handle cases where the API doesn't return all fields.