Movie Collection Manager

A multi-user, real-time desktop application for managing shared movie collections, built in modern C++17. Multiple users on a network can add, edit, and delete movies simultaneously — every change is broadcast instantly to all connected clients.

Developed by Hackrizen as part of the CodingBurgas Sprint Project (2025–2026).

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Team

Name	Role
Rafail Kolibarov	Scrum-Trainer
Petar Kapralev	Developer
Nikolai Peshev	Developer
Hristiyan Mihailov	Developer

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Features

• Real-time collaboration — changes made by any client are immediately reflected on all others
• Native desktop GUI — powered by Dear ImGui (GLFW + OpenGL3), with a sortable and searchable movie table
• JSON persistence — the server automatically saves the collection to a .json file
• WebSocket hub — low-latency, atomic updates via IXWebSocket
• Search & sort — linear and binary search, recursive quicksort by any field
• Statistics — recursive total duration aggregation and average rating calculation
• Input validation — enforced at the logic layer before any state change

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Architecture

The project follows a strict three-tier structural programming design. No global state, no application-defined classes, no member functions — only structs and free functions.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           Presentation Layer                │
│  include/presentation.h / src/presentation  │
│  Dear ImGui GUI — never touches data layer  │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│              Logic Layer                    │
│     include/logic.h / src/logic.cpp         │
│  Quicksort, search, validation, statistics  │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│               Data Layer                    │
│      include/data.h / src/data.cpp          │
│  Movie/Collection structs, CRUD, JSON I/O   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│            Network / Protocol               │
│  include/network.h   include/protocol.h     │
│  src/network.cpp     src/protocol.cpp       │
│  IXWebSocket server & client, JSON wire     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Module	Files	Responsibility
Data	include/data.h, src/data.cpp	Thread-safe Movie / Collection structs, CRUD helpers, JSON persistence
Logic	include/logic.h, src/logic.cpp	Recursive quicksort, linear + binary search, duration aggregation, validation
Presentation	include/presentation.h, src/presentation.cpp	Dear ImGui desktop GUI — sortable, searchable, selectable table
Protocol	include/protocol.h, src/protocol.cpp	JSON wire format with strongly-typed Message structs
Network	include/network.h, src/network.cpp	IXWebSocket server (owns canonical state, broadcasts events) and client

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Building

Requirements: CMake ≥ 3.20, a C++17 compiler, OpenGL drivers.

All other dependencies — nlohmann/json, IXWebSocket, GLFW, Dear ImGui — are fetched automatically by CMake's FetchContent on the first configure. No manual installs needed.

Windows (MSVC)

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build --config Debug -j

Server only (no GUI, no OpenGL required):

cmake -S . -B build -DMCM_BUILD_CLIENT=OFF
cmake --build build --config Debug -j

Linux / macOS

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build -j

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Running

The application runs as two separate processes: a server hub and one or more client GUIs.

Windows

Open two separate terminal windows.

# Terminal 1 — server (persists collection to movies.json)
.\build\Debug\mcm.exe server 9275 movies.json

# Terminal 2+ — client GUI (repeat for each user)
.\build\Debug\mcm.exe client 127.0.0.1 9275

For a Release build, replace Debug with Release in the paths above.

Linux / macOS

# Terminal 1 — server
./build/mcm server 9275 movies.json

# Terminal 2+ — client GUI
./build/mcm client 127.0.0.1 9275

To connect from another machine on the network, replace 127.0.0.1 with the server's local IP address.

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Multi-User Workflow

1. Start one server on any machine on the network.
2. Launch any number of clients, each pointing at the server's IP and port.
3. Every add / update / delete performed by any client is:
   • validated and applied by the server atomically
   • persisted to movies.json within one second
   • broadcast in real time to every connected GUI

The client status bar shows ONLINE when connected. If the server isn't reachable at startup, click Connect once the server is running.

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Project Structure

.
├── include/
│   ├── data.h
│   ├── logic.h
│   ├── network.h
│   ├── presentation.h
│   └── protocol.h
├── src/
│   ├── data.cpp
│   ├── logic.cpp
│   ├── main.cpp
│   ├── network.cpp
│   ├── presentation.cpp
│   └── protocol.cpp
├── build/
├── out/
├── CMakeLists.txt
└── README.md

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Tech Stack

Technology	Purpose
C++17	Core language
CMake + FetchContent	Build system & dependency management
Dear ImGui	Desktop GUI
GLFW + OpenGL3	Window & rendering backend for ImGui
IXWebSocket	WebSocket server and client
nlohmann/json	JSON serialization / persistence

Development

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Docker

The server can be run inside Docker (no display required — server-only build, no OpenGL/GLFW).

Quick start

# Build the image
docker build -t mcm-server .

# Run the server (persists collection to a named volume)
docker run -p 9275:9275 -v mcm-data:/data mcm-server

Docker Compose

docker compose up --build   # build and start
docker compose up -d        # start in background
docker compose down         # stop and remove containers
docker compose logs -f      # stream logs

Connecting a local client to the containerised server

# Windows
.\build\Debug\mcm.exe client 127.0.0.1 9275

# Linux / macOS
./build/mcm client 127.0.0.1 9275

Custom port

docker run -p 8080:8080 mcm-server 8080 /data/collection.json

Wipe saved data

docker volume rm mcm-data

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License

This project was created for educational purposes as part of the CodingBurgas 2025–2026 Sprint Programme.