MovieNest Gets a Mood Ring: Recommending Films with Weather, Time & Tears

June 27, 2025

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Shravan Bobade

MovieNest Gets a Mood Ring: Recommending Films with Weather, Time & Tears

So I was staring out my window one rainy night, thinking:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if my app felt the vibe and showed me a romantic thriller?”

And that’s how I spiraled into turning my chill movie app into a mood-sensing, AI-powered, vibe-aware recommender system.

Spoiler: The mood logic was easier than the geolocation permission denial logic.

Goal: Make MovieNest Feel Emotions (Kind Of)

This update was all about personalization. I wanted the app to:

Detect the current weather and time
Guess your mood from that combo (like a fortune teller… but with JavaScript)
Recommend movies that match that vibe

Also:

Handle permission denial gracefully (not by throwing an error and dying )
Keep everything snappy with virtual scroll + debounce

The (Questionable) AI Logic

Step 1: Mood Detection

I hooked into OpenWeather’s API + good ol’ Date() and assigned moods like:

Rainy Night → Romantic Thriller
Sunny Morning → Feel-Good Comedy
Foggy Afternoon → Mystery Drama

Basically, my app is now a softboi who asks,

*”Are you okay? Here’s a comfort film.”

Step 2: Mood → Genre

I made a neat moodGenreMapping object:

{
  feelgood: [35, 10751], // Comedy, Family
  cozy: [10749, 18], // Romance, Drama
  adventure: [12, 28], // Adventure, Action
  mystery: [9648, 53], // Mystery, Thriller
}

So each mood maps to TMDB genres — and my app fetches them dynamically.

Step 3: Smart Fetching Flow

If you allow location:
→ Weather + Time → Mood → Genre → Movies

If you deny location (you rebel):
→ Time-only Mood → Genre → Movies

If you search manually:
→ I shut up and show you what you want.

And just to be polite, I added a Mood Explanation Banner —

“It’s raining in your area at night, so here’s a romantic thriller.”
Because transparency matters. Even in movie logic.

‍ Challenges, AKA “Why Am I Like This?”

Weather API 401

I foolishly used OpenWeather’s fancy 3.0 OneCall endpoint.
Turns out, that one costs real money
So I switched to a free and functional endpoint. Budget dev life.

No Location? No Problem.

I realized users could deny geolocation (how dare they), and I wasn’t handling it.
Now I fallback like a champion:\
→ Just use the time and pretend we know the weather