CineDrift - Movie and Sport Streaming

Overview

CineDrift is a comprehensive, full-stack streaming platform that brings together movies, TV shows, anime, manga, drama, live sports, live TV, and radio — all under one unified experience. It is designed to serve as an all-in-one entertainment hub, offering a seamless browsing, discovery, and playback experience across every content category.

Tech Stack & Architecture

The platform is built on a modern, production-grade tech stack:

• Frontend: Next.js (App Router), React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, Zustand, TanStack Query

• Backend: Laravel, MySQL, Redis, Sanctum (token-based auth)

• Deployment: Docker Compose on a production server behind Nginx

• External APIs: TMDB, ESPN, TheSportsDB

• Real-time: Socket.io for live updates

The frontend and backend run as separate Docker containers with independent CI/CD pipelines. Environment variables for the frontend are baked at build time via Docker build args. Scheduled tasks — including content syncs, sports updates, and live score polling — are all managed through Laravel's scheduler inside the backend container.

Content Discovery & Streaming

Content discovery is a core strength of CineDrift. Movies and TV shows are automatically synced from TMDB with scheduled pipelines for trending, popular, and new release content. Users can:

• Browse by genre, provider, or quality (including a dedicated 4K section)

• Search globally with instant suggestions across all content types

• Switch between multiple streaming servers per title — ensuring playback availability

• Track watch progress, manage watchlists, and resume across devices

Every movie and TV show supports a multi-server playback system with a provider-switching UI, so users always have a fallback if one source goes down.

Anime, Drama & Extended Content

CineDrift goes beyond Western content. The platform includes dedicated sections for:

• Anime & Manga — with trending and popular feeds

• YouTube Dramas — full episode management and playback

• Short Dramas — including GL and BL categories with tag-based browsing

Each content type has its own browse pages, detail views, and streaming interface.

Live Sports & Cricket Integration

Live sports integration is one of the most technically involved features of the platform.

Football matches are synced via TheSportsDB with automated status updates every 5 minutes.

Cricket is powered by a custom-built pipeline using ESPN's public API:

• Auto-discovers active tournaments (IPL, PSL, ICC events, bilateral series) from ESPN's scoreboard header

• Syncs match schedules, teams, venues, and logos every 10 minutes

• Updates live scores every 1 minute via a dedicated cron job

• Auto-generates stream links by scraping WebCric — resolving match pages, extracting iframe embed URLs from frame pages, and building direct streaming links

A sports search feature lets users find live and upcoming matches with real-time LIVE badges and score overlays directly from the global search.

Live TV & Radio

Live TV and radio are fully integrated with category-based browsing and dedicated player interfaces. Users can browse channels and stations by category, making CineDrift not just a VOD platform but a true multi-format entertainment destination.

User Features & Authentication

The platform supports full authentication via email/password and Google OAuth. Logged-in users get access to:

• Personal watchlist

• Watch history and continue-watching

• Cross-device progress tracking

• Collections and downloads

The progress tracking system is smart — it accepts both internal UUIDs and TMDB IDs, resolving them transparently on the backend.

Admin Panel

A full admin dashboard provides control over:

• Syncing movies and TV shows from TMDB

• Managing streaming servers and providers

• Configuring tags and content metadata

• Handling YouTube drama entries

• Monitoring the sports data pipeline

Technical Highlights

• UUID-based user models with Sanctum personal access tokens

• CSRF handling for stateful API sessions with excluded API routes

• Automated TMDB sync pipelines (trending daily, releases every 2 hours, genres weekly)

• ESPN cricket scraper with auto-discovery of new tournaments

• WebCric stream resolution — multi-step scraping to extract embed URLs

• Graceful error handling for dead streaming domains and API failures

• Containerized deployment with Nginx reverse proxy and Docker Compose

CineDrift is a solo-built, full-stack project demonstrating end-to-end ownership — from database design and API architecture to frontend UI, real-time data pipelines, DevOps, and production deployment.