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.

Note: The application interface is in French.

Disclaimer: This was a fun, experimental project built with “AI slop” (Cursor), so it may have security issues. For example, python_video_server uses the default token‑in‑URL approach to serve video files, which can leave user tokens in logs or browser history. There are ways to improve this, but at this point I’m blinder than Ray Charles.

Features

User Features

• User accounts: register, login, JWT authentication
• Optional registration verification: via DOG_NAMES environment variable (if unset, verification is skipped)
• Movie tracking: mark nominees/movies as watched (per user), with watched date
• Movie browsing: browse movies by Oscar year + API for available years
• Movie details: pulled from OMDb (title/plot/rating/poster) via IMDb ID (optional)
• User statistics: watched count, points from movies watched and Oscar picks, leaderboard
• Video player: built-in player page with multiple source options (VOD link, direct video URL, embed, or server file)
• Resume playback: per-user playback progress saving (time/duration)
• Oscar picks: make picks for each category, auto-save on selection
• Scores: view leaderboard with correct/incorrect pick counts, detailed breakdown per user
• View all picks: see everyone's picks in a comparison view

Admin Features

• Movie management: add, edit (optionally refresh from OMDb), delete movies
• User management: view users, reset passwords (temp password + forced change on next login)
• Oscar category management: create, edit, delete categories with nominees, bulk delete
• Winner management: mark winners for each category (can clear winners)
• Global settings: active Oscar year, "completion" modal content for checklist
• Database backup/restore: create backups and restore from backup files
• App version control: manage app version display (footer) from admin panel (no GitHub dependency)
• Player UI settings: control player page admin status display

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                        # registration verification answers (comma-separated)
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/:
  • User - user accounts
  • Movie - Oscar-nominated movies
  • OscarCategory - Oscar categories with nominees
  • OscarPick - user picks for each category
  • Setting - global settings (active year, etc.)
  • PlaybackProgress - video playback progress per user

More .env options

The app also reads these environment variables (all optional):

PORT=5000                         # server port (default: 5000)
JWT_EXPIRES_IN=8h                 # JWT expiry (default: 8h)
VIDEO_FILES_DIR=/abs/path/to/video # where server video files live (default: ./public/video)
VIDEO_SESSION_MAX_AGE_SECONDS=28800 # video_auth cookie max-age (default: 8h)
MOVIES_CACHE_TTL_MS=30000         # movies route cache TTL (default: 30000ms)

Notes:

• The server serves the UI from public/ (open http://localhost:5000 by default).
• If you use video_file in a movie record, it must be a relative path under VIDEO_FILES_DIR (the backend blocks traversal/absolute paths).

Python video server (optional)

There is also a standalone Python server in python_video_server/ that mirrors /api/video/:id (Range streaming + JWT + Mongo). See python_video_server/README.md for setup and usage instructions.