Building a Movie Recommendation API with Spring Boot 🎬

Source: Dev.to

Recently I built a backend API for a movie and TV show recommendation platform using Java and Spring Boot.
The goal of the project was to practice designing a REST API, implementing authentication, and integrating an external API.

Features

• Search movies and TV shows using the TMDB API
• User authentication with JWT
• Save favorite movies and shows
• Rate content
• Get trending content
• RESTful API design
• API documentation using Swagger / OpenAPI

Tech Stack

Backend

• Java 21
• Spring Boot
• Spring Security
• JWT Authentication
• Spring Data JPA

Database

• PostgreSQL

External API

• TMDB API (The Movie Database)

Documentation

• Swagger / OpenAPI

Example API Request

Get trending content

GET /content/trending

Response

{
  "page": 1,
  "results": [
    {
      "title": "War Machine",
      "release_date": "2026-02-12",
      "vote_average": 7.1
    }
  ]
}

Project Architecture

The application follows a layered architecture:

Controller → Service → Repository → Database

This structure helps keep the code organized and maintainable.

API Documentation

The API is documented using Swagger / OpenAPI, which makes it easy to explore and test the endpoints.

What I Learned

• Designing REST APIs
• Implementing authentication with Spring Security
• Using JWT for authorization
• Integrating external APIs
• Structuring a backend project using layered architecture

GitHub Repository

You can find the full project here:
https://github.com/alejandrotg-code/tv-and-movie-db