The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Season & Episode ids
posted by elazerspam@yahoo.comSTAFFMOD on January 29, 2014 at 7:59 AM
Hi,
When getting Season details and episode details, and id is also returned as part of the parameters. However, there is no API that uses those ids, since seasons and episodes are accessed with the show's id + season/episodes numbers.
I wanted to know what are those ids stand for, and more importantly, are they unique TMDB ids? meaning that there can be no conflict between the movie id and season id (for example).
Thanks.
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 29, 2014 at 7:40 PM
Hi elazerspam@yahoo.com,
These ids will be used for the change log system once it's in place for TV shows. Similar to the way it works with movies, the way we bind changes to an item is with the id. A simple example would be if someone deleted an episode but then replaced it, you would have a way of knowing this was a new object.
They are unique per collection, just like they are with movies and people so unique within each group of TV shows, seasons and episodes.
Reply by Jack Wright
on January 30, 2014 at 1:08 PM
Them TV episode IDs won't necessarily be unique across different TV series?
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 30, 2014 at 2:50 PM
All TV show, season and episode ids are unique per collection. So yes, they're all unique.
Reply by Jack Wright
on January 31, 2014 at 8:32 AM
Can you clarify what you mean by "collection"? It sounds like it's possible that a tv episode id may conflict with a movie id. I was thinking that each episode was treated like a movie, having a unique id that wouldn't conflict with any other tv episode or movie. But it sounds like you're saying I need to qualify each tv episode id with its series and season.
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 31, 2014 at 12:05 PM
When I say collection, I mean each media type so, movies, people, TV series, seasons and episodes.
Ids are only unique within each group. Id 55 can exist in each one, they are not globally unique.
Reply by SGMcejo
on January 17, 2018 at 3:00 PM
Is there a way to access the season directly via id? I find it quite uncomfortable to store the parent media id (series) of a season alongside with it when i want to access a season directly.
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 21, 2018 at 12:26 PM
@SGMcejo Unfortunately, no. The only way in is with the series id and season number.
Reply by Webstractions
on March 28, 2018 at 8:00 PM
Is it possible to consider adding
tv/episode/:idandtv/season/:idroutes to query by episode/season ID numbers?Reply by Travis Bell
on March 31, 2018 at 11:30 AM
Hi @Webstractions,
Perhaps, but the main problem with this idea is that when episodes get deleted you're still going to need a way to fetch the new ID. As opposed to with the current method where I can guarantee the data being available the season/episode namespaced key.
Something to thin about anyways...
Reply by Webstractions
on March 31, 2018 at 6:19 PM
Guess that would depend on how often an episode gets deleted. One of those six of one, half-dozen of another type of things.
My reasoning behind having an episode query is how simplistic client apps can be for tracking watched episodes, for example, by using localStorage. I suppose, this can still be handled with a nested array too.
Thanks for at least considering it.