MoviesThisDay

A modern FastAPI web application and API for exploring movies released on this day in history.

Website: moviesthisday.com

• FastAPI backend serving both HTML (Bootstrap-styled) and JSON endpoints
• Browse movies by date, search by title, IMDb ID, release date, year, genre, studio, and runtime
• Modern, responsive UI with advanced search and navigation
• Robust input validation and helpful error messages for all endpoints
• API endpoints for integration and data exploration
• Pagination for large search result sets
• Clear and Search buttons in the search form
• Consistent, modern navigation and theming across all pages
• About page with project and API info, and a link to the GitHub repo

• / — Main page: Browse movies released on today's date or any selected date
• /search — Advanced search page with sidebar form, paginated results, and modern UI
• /about — About page with project info, usage, API examples, and GitHub link
• /details/{imdb_id} — Movie details page: View all available information for a specific movie by IMDb ID, including poster, ratings, and a correction form

• /ping — Simple health check (returns { "status": "ok" })
• /health — Detailed health and status info (memory, uptime, version, database metadata, etc.)
• /movies/today — Movies released today (JSON)
• /movies/lookup — Flexible search by any combination of: imdb_id, title (regex), release_date, id, release_year, runtime, genre (regex), studio (regex), rated
• /movies/by-imdb/{imdb_id} — Lookup by IMDb ID
• /movies/by-title?title=... — Search by title (regex)
• /movies/by-release-date/{release_date} — Search by release date (YYYY-MM-DD)
• /movies/by-year/{release_year} — Search by year
• /movies/by-genre?genre=... — Search by genre (regex)
• /movies/by-studio?studio=... — Search by studio (regex)
• /movies/by-day/{mm_dd} — Movies released on a specific MM-DD (all years)
• /movie/{imdb_id} — Get all available details for a movie by IMDb ID (JSON, 404 if not found)
• /stats/movies_by_day — Movie counts by MM-DD (JSON, for stats/graphs)
• /stats/total_movies — Total and popular movie counts (JSON)
• /stats/movies_by_rating — Movie counts by normalized rating (JSON)
• /stats/movies_by_year — Movie counts by release year (JSON)

# Movies released today (JSON)
curl -X GET 'http://localhost:8000/movies/today'

# Movies by day (MM-DD)
curl -X GET 'http://localhost:8000/movies/by-day/06-15'

# Search by title (regex)
curl -G --data-urlencode 'title=^tron' 'http://localhost:8000/movies/by-title'

# Search by studio (regex)
curl -G --data-urlencode 'studio=Warner' 'http://localhost:8000/movies/by-studio'

# Advanced lookup (multiple fields)
curl -G --data-urlencode 'title=star' --data-urlencode 'release_year=1977' 'http://localhost:8000/movies/lookup'

# Search by genre (regex)
curl -G --data-urlencode 'genre=Action' 'http://localhost:8000/movies/by-genre'

• Explore and test all API endpoints with Swagger UI at: http://localhost:8000/docs (or https://moviesthisday.com/docs in production)

On first run, if the required movie_db/movies_by_day.pkl data file is missing, the app will automatically download and unzip it from a public source. No manual download is required for a fresh install.

You can also manually download the latest zipped data file here:

• movies_by_day.pkl.zip (latest)

Place the downloaded zip file in the movie_db/ directory and the app will extract it on startup if needed.

• app.py — Main FastAPI app and all endpoints
• templates/ — HTML templates (Bootstrap, modern UI)
• movie_db/ — Data and scripts for building the movie index

You can run MoviesThisDay using the official Docker container for easy deployment:

# Start the container (see run.sh for details)
./run.sh

This will:

• Pull and run the latest MoviesThisDay image
• Expose the app on port 8000 (or your chosen port)
• Set the timezone via the TZ environment variable (default: America/Los_Angeles)
• Automatically restart the container unless stopped
• Provide a healthcheck for the container

You can also run the container manually:

docker run -d \
  --name moviesthisday \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -e TZ=America/Los_Angeles \
  jasonacox/moviesthisday:latest

See run.sh for a robust startup script with healthcheck, log tailing, and persistent data volume.

MoviesThisDay includes an optional MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for integration with AI chatbots and tools such as Claude Desktop.

• The MCP server allows AI assistants to fetch a summary of popular movies released on a given day in history, using the public MoviesThisDay API.
• Works with Claude Desktop, fastmcp, and any MCP-compatible client.
• See mcp/README.md for setup and usage details.

Example Claude Desktop Use Case:

With the MCP server running, you can ask Claude questions like:

• "What movies were released today in history?"
• "List movies released on July 4th."
• "What movies came out on 1999-03-31?"

Claude will call the MoviesThisDay tool and display a summary of movies released on the requested date.

• Author: Jason A. Cox
• Project: MoviesThisDay on GitHub
• License: MIT
• Vibe Coded (Read the Story)