The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Netflix IDs and availability?
posted by Mathew FoscariniSTAFFMOD on February 13, 2017 at 12:13 PM
Hi,
There are a few websites that show movies available for watching on NetFlix (I assume the US region only).
I've been unable to figure out how they are getting the NetFlix IDs and status for these movies. For example; Rotten Tomatoes can list movies for NetFlix along with a direct link to that movie on the NetFlix domain.
I can see in the TMDB releases that there is a digital release type, but is there a way to filter by NetFlix and link to the NetFlix website?
Thanks,
Reply by Travis Bell
on February 13, 2017 at 12:21 PM
We do not have discrete sources like that. We simply have a field to store a "digital" release date, but there's no link to any articular sources.
Netflix used to have a public API but they shut that down a few years ago. There's only two ways anyone is doing that anymore, first is through an official partnership with Netflix. That's the only legal way; the other way is people scraping their website or a website that is an official partner. I'm sure lots are doing the latter as Netflix has been very strict about who they let be a partner.
So the long and short of it, we don't have that data.
Reply by Mathew Foscarini
on February 13, 2017 at 12:57 PM
This is so much more work than I original thought it would be. Seems like there is a data race going on of who can collect the most data on movies and who has the best data.
I think having a NetFlix list ordered by popularity would be a great feature, but scraping seems to be the only way to get the list.
They have a GitHub account and projects there, but so far I haven't found anything that hints there is an open API.
https://github.com/netflix
Reply by Travis Bell
on February 13, 2017 at 1:07 PM
Pretty much everyone is closing their API's. There is a significant cost to running these at scale (I would know) and for a lot of companies, it offers no real value to their bottom line. That statement is completely false for TMDb as we rely on a quid pro quo relationship with our users.
There isn't. It was a huge deal when they shut down:
It was a very deliberate step. They took it completely down. Only a very small number of special white listed users got to keep using it. And since then, they only partner with very special partners.