Customer asked about fetching data from IMDB

[TechBoyJK]

I work at a webhosting company, and one of our customers was asking about how to get movie data for a movie index he had. He was basically asking how someone could search a movie on his website, and if he could return data from IMDB or a similar movie source.

IMDB will license their content, for $15,000.

Per year.

Does anybody know of any other methods/solutions to get movie data? Just like title, actors, release date, dvd cover image, etc.

 

[jacc1234]

http://www.themoviedb.org/

There are also programs that use scrappers to get the data from IMDB but im not sure on the legality in a commercial setting.

 

[TheKub]

Awesome App:

http://themetabrowser.com/

 

[TechBoyJK]

http://www.themoviedb.org/

There are also programs that use scrappers to get the data from IMDB but im not sure on the legality in a commercial setting.

themoviedb.org looks perfect. They have an API to grab their data.

He wants a custom website for himself where people can search about movies. He doesn't care if it says powered by "" or whatever.

 

[jacc1234]

Yea, I thought that would be the right fit. There is also "thetvdb.org" in case you need it.

 

[sdifox]

err, your client is going to get his pants sued off if IMDB decides to prosecute, and they will.

 

[alkemyst]

http://www.themoviedb.org/

There are also programs that use scrappers to get the data from IMDB but im not sure on the legality in a commercial setting.

technically not legal in any setting.

 

[Fritzo]

I could write a bot that would do that and compile it to a database, but I'm not sure IMDB would be too happy about that.

 

[MotionMan]

I work at a webhosting company, and one of our customers was asking about how to get movie data for a movie index he had. He was basically asking how someone could search a movie on his website, and if he could return data from IMDB or a similar movie source.

IMDB will license their content, for $15,000.

Per year.

Does anybody know of any other methods/solutions to get movie data? Just like title, actors, release date, dvd cover image, etc.

Why would he want to, basically, try to compete or copy what IMDB does?

MotionMan

 

[Platypus]

Screen scraping is simple enough to do but it is a very grey area and I'll defer to the lawyers who know a lot more about it than I do.. but I'll tell you it's extremely common.

Personally, I wouldn't touch that shit with a 10ft pole if I were you. I'd also question his business model as no one is going to bother with some bullshit hosted site to get info that IMDB already has.