Customer asked about fetching data from IMDB

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TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
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.
 

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
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

Senior member
Sep 3, 2005
392
0
0
Yea, I thought that would be the right fit. There is also "thetvdb.org" in case you need it.
 

sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
100,434
17,943
126
err, your client is going to get his pants sued off if IMDB decides to prosecute, and they will.
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,920
2,161
126
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

Lifer
Jan 11, 2006
17,124
12
81
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

Lifer
Apr 26, 2001
31,046
321
136
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.
 
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