Oscars Pool 2026

Little nodejs + mongodb app that I hack together with ChatGPT and Cursor to keep track of watched movies for an incoming Oscars Pool with some friends.

Features

• User accounts: register, login, JWT auth
• Simple registration verification via DOG_NAMES
• Mark nominees as watched (per user), with watched date
• Browse movies by Oscar year + API for available years
• User stats: watched count/ratio and watched titles
• Movie details pulled from OMDb (title/plot/rating/poster) via IMDb ID
• Admin movie management: add, edit (optionally refresh from OMDb), delete
• Built-in player page with multiple source options (VOD link, direct video file, embed)
• Resume playback: per-user playback progress saving (time/duration)
• Global settings: active Oscar year, “completion” modal content for checklist
• Password flows: admin temp password reset + forced change on next login
• App version display (footer) managed from Admin panel (no GitHub dependency)

Setup

Create a .env file at the project root (same folder as package.json).

Minimal steps:

npm install
node index.js

Add this to your .env (required: MONGO_URI, JWT_SECRET):

# required
MONGO_URI=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/oscars-pool # MongoDB connection string
JWT_SECRET=replace-with-a-random-string         # JWT signing secret (auth)

# optional
DOG_NAMES=woof,WOOF,Woof                        # simple registration "verification"
OMDB_API=your_omdb_key                          # OMDb API key (movie info)

Generate a good JWT_SECRET:

openssl rand -hex 32

Database (MongoDB)

This app uses MongoDB via Mongoose. Provide a connection string in MONGO_URI.

• Use MongoDB Atlas (recommended) or a local MongoDB instance.
• MONGO_URI examples:
  • Atlas: mongodb+srv://USER:[email protected]/<dbName>?retryWrites=true&w=majority
  • Local: mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/<dbName>
• Collections are created/managed automatically from the models in models/ (e.g. User, Movie, Setting, PlaybackProgress).