Self-Hosted Spotlight: Movary

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve seen a lot of movies. While I’ve tried to keep track of them in journals and the sort, I’ve never really kept up with those attempts. I read the most recent Self Hosted Roundup #21 by noted.lol (Great blog, recommended reading all the way) and saw that there was a self hosted option for something like that now. Movary.

Set up was rather easy, their only recommended method of set up at this time is via Docker, an example of my docker-compose.yml can be found below:

version: "3.5"

services:
  movary:
    image: leepeuker/movary:latest
    container_name: movary
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    environment:
      TMDB_API_KEY: "APIKEY"
      DATABASE_MODE: "mysql"
      DATABASE_MYSQL_HOST: "mysql"
      DATABASE_MYSQL_NAME: "movary"
      DATABASE_MYSQL_USER: "USERNAME"
      DATABASE_MYSQL_PASSWORD: "PASSWORD"
    volumes:
      - ./movary-storage:/app/storage

  mysql:
    image: mysql:8.0
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: "movary"
      MYSQL_USER: "USERNAME"
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: "PASSWORD"
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: "UBERCOMPLEXPASSWORD"
    volumes:
      - ./movary-db:/var/lib/mysql
    restart: always
volumes:
  movary-db:
  movary-storage:

You will need to sign up with https://www.themoviedb.org/ and get an API key. The process was fast and almost instant. The API key is used to pull movie information and media. I also recommend that you do not change the ports assigned as anything aside from 80:80 created HTTP errors on my end.

You’ll also need to run the following command to finish the installation.

docker exec movary php bin/console.php database:migration:migrate

Once you’ve got that running, go to the IP address of the machine that it’s hosted on in your web browser and you’ll be prompted to create a user account. Once that is out of the way, you’re almost ready to go!

Using the hamburger menu in the top right, you’ll see the option for “Log Movie” and you can start right away. You’ll need to log the date that you watched the movie and what your 1 to 10 rating is. From there, the movies will begin to populate your dashboard as shown above.

If your a user of Plex, Trakt.tv, Letterboxd.com or IMBd, don’t worry. Movary offers the ability to import those ratings and scrobbles with it’s built in features. Though, I can’t attest to them as I use none of those services – I’ve yet to hear any complaints regarding the import and export ability for those features.

I’ve had a few weird instances with Movary when it comes to removing a movie with an incorrect watch date and readding it, but nothing a little bit of waiting didn’t resolve. I do wish that there was the ability to log movies with no watch date (As I’ve seen a lot of movies but can’t pinpoint the date that I saw them) as well as the ability to change the watch date without having to remove the movie completely.

While I won’t use them much, it is interesting being able to run through and see your most watched genres, actors, actresses and directors. The below snapshot shows the heavy lean toward a recent Marvel rewatch spree.

I’ve definitely enjoyed using Movary so far. It’s ease of use and ability to have all the meta data of these movies at your fingertips makes it worth it if you don’t want to rely on an open forum or bloated website hosted elsewhere. Give it a try, it’s lightweight enough you could throw it on a toaster and let it run for a little while.