StreamLink — Devlog #1

🚀 Project Overview

StreamLink is a lightweight, cross-platform desktop application built to streamline how users discover movies and TV shows, manage personal watchlists, and launch streaming options or official trailers instantly.

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Desktop Core: Electron.js / Node.js
• Frontend: HTML5, Modern CSS3 (CSS Grid/Flexbox), Vanilla JavaScript
• APIs & Services:
  • OMDb API — Movie/TV metadata & poster retrieval
  • JustWatch — External streaming provider routing
  • YouTube — Official trailer query integration

✨ Key Features Built

1. Dynamic Search & Multi-Page Fetching

• Built a asynchronous fetch pipeline integrated with OMDb API.
• Implemented request debouncing on search input to optimize network calls and avoid rate limits.

2. Format Filtering

• Added client-side category filtering allowing users to isolate Movies Only or TV Series Only in real time.

3. Persistent Local Watchlist

• Implemented a client-side bookmarking engine using localStorage.
• Users can star/unstar titles from any view, with data persisting across application restarts without requiring external database authentication.

4. Fast External Routing

• Integrated Electron’s shell.openExternal IPC module to launch streaming platforms and trailer searches directly in the user’s default browser.
• Bypasses <iframe> and embed restrictions (such as YouTube Error 153) while delivering instant playback.

5. UI Resilience & Fallbacks

• Handled broken image URLs with custom onerror image fallbacks to ensure clean card grid renders at all times.

📝 Learning Points & Challenges

• iFrame Embed Restrictions: Enlisted fallback routing via shell.openExternal after encountering YouTube embed blocks (Error 153) and public API latency inside Electron windows.
• Electron Window Handling: Configured custom User-Agent headers and tuned node integration preferences for secure local data operations.

🎯 Next Steps

• Add genre-based tagging and sorting options.
• Implement local cache for poster images to reduce startup fetch times.
• Build a packaged production executable (.exe) using electron-builder.