Why is IMDB broken in BMT but not other plugins.

[adone36]

I was having many problems with BMT not retrieving movie data until Sean pointed out IMDB was having a lot of issues. I could look up titles in the gui mostly ok but auto lookup seemed to be iffy. Changing search order to the movie db as primary, fixed most of the probs. The only problem is that many titles are not listed in mvdb. Then I noticed WMCE add ons using IMDB still work fine as does CMT in Sage. I went back into BMT and it will find the movie title data instantly on IMDB but when you go to retrieve it says "cannot d/l metadata". Is there a fix for this?

[Fuzzy]

It's not that IMDB 'broke'. It's that with their constant changes to the web site, IMDB scraping is taking constant maintenance changes to keep functioning. TMDB, on the other hand, actually uses an API, so it, once implemented, takes much less effort to maintain. As such, stuckless made the decision to simply drop IMDB support from IMDB, and focus movie lookups on TMDB instead.

If you find TMDB, being community maintained, to be lacking a particular movie - it would, at least to me, indicate that you should add that movie to it.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by adone36

Then I noticed WMCE add ons using IMDB still work fine as does CMT in Sage.

Just for the record, these other plugins (including CMT) have had to frequently release updates to keep them working properly. As Fuzzy mentioned, these plugins are not using a published API to access information from IMDB - they are using scrapers (custom scripts they wrote to search the web pages for key information). Scrapers tend to be fragile, so if a web site changes its layout, the scrapers often break.

[MitchSchaft]

Here goes Sage leaving us. Can't be bothered to update a few lines of code. Eventually everyone else will do the same thing. booooooo. Now we have to manually do it ourselves.

[Dargason]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

Here goes Sage leaving us. Can't be bothered to update a few lines of code. Eventually everyone else will do the same thing. booooooo. Now we have to manually do it ourselves.

I'm not sure if you can blame the Sage people for this -- I don't think they ever provided any support for IMDB.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

Here goes Sage leaving us. Can't be bothered to update a few lines of code. Eventually everyone else will do the same thing. booooooo. Now we have to manually do it ourselves.

If by "Sage" you mean independent and unpaid developers working on Sage, then you might be on to something. (Although I'm by no means "leaving" since I actively work on Phoenix)

As the maintainer of the BMT/Phoenix Tools, I opted to no longer support IMDB in the current fashion, since I don't have time to play cat and mouse with the site. As Fuzzy noted, imdb doesn't have an open api, and as such, the imdb data has to be parsed out of the HTML pages, which I can assure you is more than "just a few lines of code". The last time I updated IMDB I spent over 30 hours fixing those "few lines of code".

If Phoenix didn't have another source for movie data (ie, TheMovieDB), then I would have taken the time to figure the IMDB fixes. But, Phoenix/BMT does have another Movie provider, and it has an open API for accessing data, so I didn't need to fix imdb.

My time is very limited... and as such, I have to prioritize what I can work on But, there nothing stopping you from adding back in the IMBD support.. I'll happily accept the patch.

At some point in time, I'll look at adding in imdb via a 3rd party library (ie, current sageimdb.jar) but not until I know I have at least 30-40 hours that I dedicate to it.

[rnadeau]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

Here goes Sage leaving us. Can't be bothered to update a few lines of code. Eventually everyone else will do the same thing. booooooo. Now we have to manually do it ourselves.

Sage may have left us behind but there are many talented developers in this forum that are still doing everything they can to enhance sage and I for one thank all of them and will continue to use sage as long as I can. These developers also realize sage is the best thing out there and they still use it so I think we'll be set for a while.

[silkshadow]

Came over to see what was up, totally understand Sean. Guess I'll be working out a new filtering scheme this weekend . Also, firing off an angry email to IMDB, not that it will do much. They really must offer an API for free software devs or a licensing scheme at least. The internet is becoming less open the farther we get into this century .

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by silkshadow

Came over to see what was up, totally understand Sean. Guess I'll be working out a new filtering scheme this weekend . Also, firing off an angry email to IMDB, not that it will do much. They really must offer an API for free software devs or a licensing scheme at least. The internet is becoming less open the farther we get into this century .

Their advertisements don't work via an API though. That's the advantage of little community based projects like TMDB, over big corporate pages like amazon's IMDB. TMDB just have to get enough donations to keep the servers powered up. IMDB has to market enough targeted advertisements to keep the amazon bosses happy.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Their advertisements don't work via an API though. That's the advantage of little community based projects like TMDB, over big corporate pages like amazon's IMDB. TMDB just have to get enough donations to keep the servers powered up. IMDB has to market enough targeted advertisements to keep the amazon bosses happy.

FYI... This weekend I'll be releasing a whole new Phoenix update (api, core, and UI). In terms of the "core"...

- I'm now using nielm's IMDB library, so imdb will be restored
- TheMovieDB is using another 3rd party library, and I'm doing alot more work to avoid non-english posters
- I'm updating the automatic updater, to pull in TVDB information even if Preserve Original Metadata is checked, WHEN the original metadata is empty. ie, if the EPG description is emty, then it will use the TVDB, but it will not overwrite the description, if it exists.

THere are a number of other smaller changes as well, but I've been focuses the last week or so on this.

FYI... related to IMDB... IMDB does make the data available (at least they used to), but it's done via a bunch of separate text files that DO NOT contain the imdb id. I've looked at this in the past.

[silkshadow]

Wow, I said it before but I will say it again: I love you .

[AtariJeff]

Originally Posted by stuckless

FYI... This weekend I'll be releasing a whole new Phoenix update (api, core, and UI). In terms of the "core"...

- I'm now using nielm's IMDB library, so imdb will be restored
- TheMovieDB is using another 3rd party library, and I'm doing alot more work to avoid non-english posters
- I'm updating the automatic updater, to pull in TVDB information even if Preserve Original Metadata is checked, WHEN the original metadata is empty. ie, if the EPG description is emty, then it will use the TVDB, but it will not overwrite the description, if it exists.

THere are a number of other smaller changes as well, but I've been focuses the last week or so on this.

FYI... related to IMDB... IMDB does make the data available (at least they used to), but it's done via a bunch of separate text files that DO NOT contain the imdb id. I've looked at this in the past.

Can't wait to try it out. As always, the FREE development by talented people on THEIR OWN TIME is greatly appreciated