Your own movie database in 5 minutes with IMDb API and Perl

http://bobbelderbos.com/2011/11/movie-database-imdb-api-perl/

by bbelderbos • 15 years ago

70 44 15 years ago

bobbelderbos.com

szabgab• 15 years ago

Unfortunately that Perl code is not a good representative of how one should write Perl in 2011.

gglanzani• 15 years ago

Do you care rewriting it for us(me)? Just curious for how perl should look like now

peteretep2• 15 years ago

I'm a complete cowboy, and would probably write something like: http://pastebin.com/mvjTG9XG

Edit: spot where I missed a comma :-P

pavel_lishin• 15 years ago

Argh, a screenshot of code.

tristanperry• 15 years ago

The code is linked in a few places:

http://bobbelderbos.com/src/moviecollection/getMovieData

It is annoying though; a link doesn't do those using screenreaders (or search engine bots!) much good.

patrickk• 15 years ago

Interesting. I've got a big XBMC media setup, and scraping metadata from a local source could certainly speed things up nicely instead of downloading from IMBD constantly.

See:

http://lifehacker.com/5536963/the-ultimate-start-to-finish-g...

In particular:

http://lifehacker.com/5505849/how-to-whip-your-movie-and-tv-...

cabirum• 15 years ago

Why not just download original db files from http://www.imdb.com/interfaces ? I mean parsing the whole db through the API may not be a good idea. There's a tool (http://www.jmdb.de/) which parses the tables you need to mysql or postgre.

10100101112• 15 years ago

Wow. Props to AMZN. How long have these files been available?

I prefer to use my own choice of parsing tools and database software and really appreciate provision of raw files like this.

But I'm not sure what the purpose of requiring attribution is if the data can only be used for personal use. Assuming we comply with the license and do not share the data, who else besides the user is going to see it?

If a user builds a better movie database with this data, he must not share it with the world or even his neighbor. Sorry, them's the rules.

jc4p• 15 years ago

Why are you giving props to Amazon?

ig12• 15 years ago

Since IMDB started, it was originally a volunteer contributed project.

danso• 15 years ago

The terms and conditions seem pretty clear that you can't save site content except for page caching: http://www.imdb.com/help/show_article?conditions

>IMDb grants you a limited license to access and make personal use of this site and not to download (other than page caching) or modify it, or any portion of it, except with express written consent of IMDb. This site or any portion of this site may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold, visited, or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose without express written consent of IMDb. This license does not include any resale or commercial use of this site or its contents or any derivative use of this site or its contents.

(and no, I'm not trying to be a negative nancy. I've wanted to analyze imdb for awhile but have known that it's not possible to do so without breaking TOC)

dashr• 15 years ago

anyone know of a good place to get Movie data (and possibly Cast/Crew) info for free or low cost for a commercial project?

senthil_rajasek• 15 years ago

freebase.com

pyre3• 15 years ago

themoviedb

huskyr• 15 years ago

Wikipedia has loads of movie data. You can use the API to extract it, or use dbpedia.org for a more friendly view.

AdamTReineke• 15 years ago

There is some data available for personal, non-commercial use. http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?usedatasoftware

However, licensing the database is super expensive: "We offer licensing packages that start at US$15,000 per year." http://www.imdb.com/help/licensing/contact

Jun84• 15 years ago

Right, which brings us to the question: who actually owns the data, i.e. where did IMDb get its data? Is a movie's crew public information? Will the studios give this information to me if I ask them?

I think it would be interesting an very useful to have a db of information of all Hollywood movies (my guess ~50-60K) and make it freely available.

sp3322• 15 years ago

It doesn't matter who owns the information. If you break the Terms of Service, you don't get to use their service to access the information.

hvs• 15 years ago

Who would be paying for this DB to be hosted? It's always interesting to talk about making things "free", but in the end someone is paying for it.

anonova• 15 years ago

If anyone is looking for a movie database with a less strict terms of use, check http://www.themoviedb.org/

This is the service "used by many popular media centers like Moovida, XBMC, Plex, MythTV and MediaPortal."

They have a pretty nice API too. http://api.themoviedb.org/2.1/

bbelderbos3• 15 years ago

thanks all for your feedback. this is just for personal use. thanks for the perl suggestions, I am just learning

ImprovedSilence2• 15 years ago

I found this really cool. last night I knew nothing about Perl or mySQL, and just working through little things like this can really get you going on learning code and just grasping a basic understanding of the syntax. But no PHP code linked, just a video shot? I was hoping to get that part going as well.

bbelderbos3• 15 years ago

thank you. I uploaded a the php code of the example site you saw in the video: http://bobbelderbos.com/src/moviecollection/site_php

ImprovedSilence2• 15 years ago

Awesome, thanks. I saw lots of other interesting hacks on your blog too, I intend to play around with some of them, it's really the best motivator for me when it comes to learning programming.

Your own movie database in 5 minutes with IMDb API and Perl

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