Start-here.page=about.post
title: "First School Project: Kino Search"
date: 2025-09-24
tags: [python, mysql, mongodb, school-project, learning]
summary: "My first real Python project — a console movie search app built with MySQL and MongoDB. Graded 1 (Sehr Gut)."
🎬 Kino Search — My First School Project
Graded 1 (Sehr Gut) - https://github.com/ThomasJager99/sakila_movie_search
“It started as a simple console movie search app.
Then it became my first real experience of building something that actually works.”
I. The Beginning
This was my first school project — a console application for movie search.
I built it completely from scratch: no templates, no frameworks, no IDE automation.
Just a terminal, a clean .venv, and a few libraries.
cd Projects/movie_search/
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install pymysql pymongo python-dotenv tabulate
That’s where it all started — the moment when theory turned into practice.
⸻
II. Connecting the Databases
I created a .env file for database credentials and added it to .gitignore.
My first test script didn’t work — the school’s MySQL server was down.
Later it came back online, and my connection finally succeeded.
Then I connected MongoDB to handle logs.
A simple test created a document with my name and returned an ID.
That was the first “alive” moment of the project.
⸻
III. SQL vs NoSQL
Working with both databases side by side taught me a lot:
• MySQL — explicit open/close, manual sessions.
• MongoDB — persistent client, automatic connection pooling.
Different rules, different personalities, one task: make them cooperate.
⸻
IV. Refactoring the Code
After a few tests the code became messy — too many prints, repeated connections.
I cleaned everything up:
• Added _mysql_conn() encapsulation.
• Moved credentials and factories into config.py.
• Created log_writer.py for Mongo logging.
• Made each module communicate through config.py.
Now MySQL opens and closes cleanly for every query,
and MongoDB stays persistent through one global client.
⸻
V. Organizing the Project
To keep things under control, I expanded my PyCharm task markers:
TODO, WIP, BUG, NOTE, QUESTION.
Small detail, but it keeps focus on what matters.
⸻
VI. What I Learned
• How to manage two databases in one project.
• Why context managers matter for clean SQL sessions.
• How to refactor config and connection logic properly.
• How structure makes learning faster and calmer.
⸻
VII. Closing Thoughts
Kino Search was my first real experience of putting theory into code —
a simple console app, but a complete working system.
It was later graded 1 (Sehr Gut) — and that feels like a solid start.
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