The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Getting the featured poster/cast via API?
posted by mhmdshvSTAFFMOD on April 22, 2017 at 12:41 AM
Hi, I've been trying to use this API for my website. So far so good, but there are two problems that i'm dealing with now.
1- The movie detail method returns a poster that is missing some texts and details on it. For example, THIS is the returned poster for inferno (2016). But the more common (or featured) poster is THIS one.
I know i can get all the posters via image method, but since this is an automated process, i have no control over choosing the proper poster, unless it's specified in the JSON response.
2- The credit method returns a wall of ID and names, of all who contributed to this movie. I really don't need the guy who was selling cigarettes in a 5 seconds scene. I'm just looking for the main 5 (or maybe 10 in some movies) characters, director and writer, just like you do it yourself, HERE.
Is it possible to achieve any of these two? Thanks for the API and support.
Reply by Prithu
on April 22, 2017 at 1:17 AM
Hey,
1 - There is no way to differentiate those two type of posters. Not a lot of people look for a specific poster type ( with and with out texts ). Maybe Travis can add another attribute to poster images like text or text-less(only tittle). But right now there is no way to get the type of poster you want.
2 - The credit method will always return all of the people who worked in the film ( including crew ). So its on your part that you will have to filter out only the first 5 or 10 cast & crew members.
Reply by mhmdshv
on April 22, 2017 at 1:42 AM
@Prithu Thanks for the reply,
So, that was just two NO to the face right? :D
Are the cast sorted by importance/priority/etc? Because this website is showing the featured cast on the link i provided. So there must be a way.
Reply by Prithu
on April 22, 2017 at 6:34 AM
Yes. Exactly in the order you see in the website.
The API is great and you should treat it as a data source, not a part of your actual code. You get the whole list of credit and then you just choose the first 5 out of it from cast and crew ( the website does the same thing when it displays the top 5 casts). I hope you get my point.
Reply by Travis Bell
on April 23, 2017 at 11:27 AM
Image tags will be arriving hopefully this year although it's a significant job because I have to re-write the entire image service to do it right. No guarantees but I am hoping to get to it in 2017.
If you want to have the same poster we use on the website, always use the one returned in the "get info" method under the
poster_path. This is because, some movies and TV shows will have an override in place and the one we have chosen as the "best poster" is not going to necessarily be the highest rated. But you can be assured this behaviour mimics the website which is usually what people want.Reply by mhmdshv
on April 23, 2017 at 8:21 PM
@travisbell Thank you. That's what i'm talking about. It's not really crucial, since as you mentioned updating thousands of images is gonna take a while.
Do you mean
Movie > Get details? Because that's what i'm using now.By the way 1 more question if you don't mind: are the budgets and revenues in Euro or something? because the API's response is different that the details provided by your website. (for example, Inferno - 2016)
PS This is the first time i see that the founder of a service is personally answering bugs/questions/etc. It's really interesting!
Reply by Travis Bell
on April 24, 2017 at 10:47 AM
Yes, that's right.
They are supposed to be in USD.
Thanks and no problem. I try to be around as much as I can.