The Movie Database Support
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Problem fetching episode titles and overview - Fallback to english, or other alternative language
posted by anderbytesSTAFFMOD on September 12, 2016 at 3:58 PM
Hi. Today when we try to fetch tv metadata (episodes), there's no fallback for items as title and overview.
So, when I try to search for metadata and querying for pt-BR as language, it returns nothing at all in some fields... it doesn't even give me a chance to query for a secondary language or even fallback to english.
I've put in TMDB the name for episode 1, so it returns correctly. But for other episodes nothing is returned.
What's my suggestion: allow more parameters in language variable, such as: https://api.themoviedb.org/3/tv/888/season/1?api_key=##API_KEY_HERE##&append_to_response=images,keywords,external_ids,credits,videos&language=pt-BR,en
So that if an episode doesn't has info for a specific language (yet), it returns something useful, instead of nothing.
In the example above... episode 1 (that has pt-BR info) would return the info of that language... and other episodes (that doesn't have pt-BR info) would return en (English as fallback)
Reply by Travis Bell
on September 12, 2016 at 4:54 PM
Supporting fallbacks is something that might exist in the future but this will never appear on the current v3 API's. v4 is a thing now, although it only supports lists and auth. If, and that's a big if, v4 ever supports full media queries it will almost for surely support fallbacks.
Reply by anderbytes
on September 12, 2016 at 8:20 PM
Even if instead of fallback, you just look at it as a priority order?
....&language=pt-BR,en <- separated by commas
for each item in language
if language has metadata in that episode then
return that language metadata
end if
next
Isn't that possible? Too simplist?
Reply by anderbytes
on November 6, 2016 at 8:39 PM
Hello. Can I just ask if the new recent changes in TMDB help in this old issue above?
Reply by anderbytes
on November 7, 2016 at 10:38 AM
And more... does the returned data from API queries support those fallbacks?
Reply by Travis Bell
on November 7, 2016 at 10:48 AM
Hi,
No, the API does not yet support fallbacks. As I've said in the past it's quite possible v3 will never support fallbacks. v3 needs a cache layer to operate at a level which we deem financially sustainable and introducing fallbacks would essentially completely negate our ability to cache any data whatsoever. As such, it's unlikely to ever support them. If and when I get the time to work more on a v4 API, that is designed to be cacheless from the start, fallbacks will become an easy feature to add.
Reply by anderbytes
on November 7, 2016 at 10:50 AM
Thanks for the info
Reply by anderbytes
on June 5, 2017 at 3:02 PM
Any visible roadmap for v4?
Reply by Travis Bell
on June 6, 2017 at 11:44 AM
Not at this time, no. It's low priority.