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Show HN: I made a CLI to retrieve info from the IMDB

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Re: Show HN: I made a CLI to retrieve info from the IMDB

#21
post #8

Interesting, but you are not the pulling information from Imdb, according to the source code it is using omdbapi.com an independent site which used to be imdbapi.com until amazon issued them a C&D. Keep in mind OmdbApi states that it uses all other resources except IMDB to compile its data, so you may not find some movies/information only found in IMDB. Regardless, thank you open sourcing your work.

> omdbapi.com an independent site which used to be imdbapi.com until amazon issued them a C&D.

How's omdbapi.com avoiding a C&D as well?

Re: Show HN: I made a CLI to retrieve info from the IMDB

#22
Very cool! I wrote a similar Python script (https://github.com/Pinkerton/Scripts/tree/master/Filmsy) to find common actors between movies. It basically acts as a Python API wrapper for omdbapi.com.

I made it because I found a simple webapp at one point that did this, but forgot to bookmark it and never found it again.

Re: Show HN: I made a CLI to retrieve info from the IMDB

#23
It's funny, this brings IMDB almost full-circle to its origins.

Back in the early 90s it was first this huge text file distributed via usenet and ftp. I remember contributing a few points of a trivia about T2: Judgement Day, one being the mirror of Arnold's "Get out." line to the trucker in Terminator to Robert Patrick delivering the same to the helicopter pilot in T2.

Later on, after the volume of data was becoming unwieldy for a flat text file, it was converted to a MS-DOS based database system. You'd download a ton of archive files, unpack them, then run a binary that would allow you to query things like title, year, actor. One of the best features from those days (and maybe the very early web-based IMDB) was you could say, "show me actors that were common to these 2 movies" (or maybe it was "given these 2 actors, show me movies they both starred in" -- or maybe both).

I sorely miss those days of a community-driven IMDB. I was truly saddened when it "sold out" and became a more-or-less commercial portal.

Re: Show HN: I made a CLI to retrieve info from the IMDB

#25

nobody cares asshole

Why would you post this? He's open sourced his work and made something that will at least serve as learning material for python developers. There's no need to be crabby.

although I do agree, I still wonder if a generic 62 line python script is worth this much attention.

Re: Show HN: I made a CLI to retrieve info from the IMDB

#26

It's funny, this brings IMDB almost full-circle to its origins. Back in the early 90s it was first this huge text file distributed via usenet and ftp. I remember contributing a few points of a trivia about T2: Judgement Day , one being the mirror of Arnold's "Get out." line to the trucker in Terminator to Robert Patrick delivering the same to the helicopter pilot in T2 . Later on, after the volume of data was becomin…

You can still access the data files for private use, see http://www.imdb.com/interfaces.

Unfortunately, the data has a restrictive license. Though, I'm not sure if that entirely holds, as I believe there are limitations (at least in the United States) to having copyright on compilations of factual data.

Re: Show HN: I made a CLI to retrieve info from the IMDB

#28
post #8

Interesting, but you are not the pulling information from Imdb, according to the source code it is using omdbapi.com an independent site which used to be imdbapi.com until amazon issued them a C&D. Keep in mind OmdbApi states that it uses all other resources except IMDB to compile its data, so you may not find some movies/information only found in IMDB. Regardless, thank you open sourcing your work.

> omdbapi.com an independent site which used to be imdbapi.com until amazon issued them a C&D. How's omdbapi.com avoiding a C&D as well?

Omdbapi.com doesn't have the trademarked "imdb" word in their domain, they also seem to use wikipedia and freebase as their source.

Similar to how "Scroogle.org" stayed away from violating Google's trademark.

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