Live Demo 🚀

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🎬 Watchlist

Watchlist is a movie and TV series database application that helps users discover trending content, search for specific titles, and create a personalized watchlist.

Create your very own watchlist today.

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📌 Project Description

Watchlist is an Android application that leverages the TMDB API to provide access to an ever-growing database of over 2 million movies and TV series.

Key highlights:

• Efficient paginated search
• Favourites management
• Visually pleasing UI built with Jetpack Compose
• Fully aligned with Material 3 Design principles

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📸 Screenshots

Onboarding

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Log In & Sign Up

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Trending, Search & Favourites

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Movie & Series Details

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🛠️ Technologies Used

• Jetpack Compose
• TMDB API
• Retrofit
• Firebase
• Dagger-Hilt
• Material 3 Design

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🧠 Challenges Overcome

Firebase is excellent—but it comes with a few limitations:

1. Data Object Storage Firebase does not allow storing document values directly as data objects, so document values were stored as JSON instead.

2. Updating Documents Firebase does not support adding an entry directly to a document. The workaround involved:

   • Fetching the document as a HashMap
   • Updating the map
   • Writing the updated map back

   This resulted in two network calls instead of one, both when adding and removing favourites.

My first instinct was to over-engineer the entire solution 😅 I even shared my thought process in a Thread on X . Feel free to check it out—and don’t forget to like and follow ☺️

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🚀 Future Improvements

• Add navigation animations from the favourites screen to detail screens

• Replace Firebase with a custom backend to reduce favourites updates to a single network call

• Fetch additional data such as:

  • Cast & credits
  • Video trailers
  • Ratings and reviews

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⚙️ Before You Run

🔑 Setting the TMDB API Key

1. Get an API key from TMDB’s Website

2. In the project root, create a file named:

   apikey.properties
   

3. Add your API key:

   TMDB_API_KEY="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

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🔐 Handling Keystore Properties

You have two options:

✅ Option 1 — Release Build Variant

1. In Android Studio, create a keystore via Build > Generate Signed Bundle / APK

2. In the project root, create:

   keystore.properties
   

3. Add the following:

   KEY_ALIAS=xxxx
   KEY_PASSWORD=xxxxxxxx
   STORE_PASSWORD=xxxxxxxx
   STORE_FILE=../xxxx/xxxx.jks

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🧪 Option 2 — Debug Build Only

If you prefer to skip signing:

1. In the module’s build.gradle, comment out:

   val keystorePropertiesFile: File = rootProject.file("keystore.properties")
   val keystoreProperties = Properties()
   keystoreProperties.load(FileInputStream(keystorePropertiesFile))

2. Also comment out:

   signingConfigs {
       create("release") {
           keyAlias = keystoreProperties.getProperty("KEY_ALIAS")
           keyPassword = keystoreProperties.getProperty("KEY_PASSWORD")
           storePassword = keystoreProperties.getProperty("STORE_PASSWORD")
           storeFile = file(keystoreProperties.getProperty("STORE_FILE"))
       }
   }

3. And:

   buildTypes {
       release {
           isMinifyEnabled = false
           proguardFiles(
               getDefaultProguardFile("proguard-android-optimize.txt"),
               "proguard-rules.pro"
           )
           signingConfig = signingConfigs.getByName("release")
       }
   }

4. Ensure the build variant is set to debug in Android Studio.

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License. See the LICENSE file for details.

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If you want, I can also:

• Add badges (Android, Kotlin, Compose, TMDB)
• Reduce image sizes for faster GitHub loading
• Rewrite this as a portfolio-optimized project README for recruiters