PHP Practical Tutorial: Build a Movie Recommendation Website from Scratch

Project Overview

With the rise of the internet and streaming platforms, movies have become a major source of entertainment for people worldwide. To help users discover films that match their preferences, building a movie recommendation website using PHP is a practical and educational project. This tutorial walks you through the steps of creating a fully functional PHP-based movie recommendation website.

Requirement Analysis

Before starting development, it’s essential to define the website’s purpose and core features. A standard movie recommendation website should include the following functionalities:

• Movie categorization and search: Users can browse movies by genre or use keywords to find specific titles.
• Movie ranking list: Display the most popular movies based on ratings and view counts.
• User reviews and ratings: Allow users to post comments and rate movies.
• User registration and login: Enable personalized recommendations and user-specific features.
• Movie detail page: Provide detailed information including plot summary, cast, and release date.
• Smart recommendations: Suggest movies that align with user preferences using behavior and rating data.

Database Design

The database forms the backbone of the project, storing user information, movie details, and interaction data. The main tables include:

• User table: Stores user accounts, passwords, and email addresses.
• Movie table: Contains details such as movie name, director, cast, genre, and release date.
• Rating table: Records user ratings for each movie.
• Comment table: Stores user reviews and links them to corresponding movies.

Development Implementation

The following steps outline how to develop the movie recommendation website using PHP:

• Create the database: Use SQL to build the user, movie, rating, and comment tables.
• Front-end development: Implement pages such as the homepage, movie details, and user profile using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Back-end logic: Write PHP scripts to handle registration, login, search, review, and rating functions.
• Database connection:

<span class="fun">$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=movie_site;charset=utf8', 'root', 'password');</span>

This uses PHP’s PDO extension to securely connect to and interact with the database.

• Recommendation algorithm: Generate personalized suggestions using collaborative filtering or content-based filtering methods based on user activity and ratings.
• Website deployment: Test and deploy the finished project on a server, followed by optimization for performance and security.

Example of a Recommendation Algorithm

Here’s a simple example of a user-based collaborative filtering function:

// Get user-movie rating matrix
function getUserRatings($pdo) {
    $stmt = $pdo->query('SELECT user_id, movie_id, rating FROM rating');
    $ratings = [];
    while ($row = $stmt->fetch()) {
        $ratings[$row['user_id']][$row['movie_id']] = $row['rating'];
    }
    return $ratings;
}

By calculating similarity between users, the system can recommend movies that align with similar users’ tastes, providing a personalized viewing experience.

Project Summary

This project offers a complete learning path for understanding PHP in real-world applications. From requirement analysis and database design to front-end, back-end, and recommendation logic, each stage deepens your grasp of web development. In the future, you can enhance it further with improved algorithms, external API data sources, and responsive design to create a smarter and more user-friendly movie platform.