The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
API v3 limits request
posted by mmaihoffSTAFFMOD on January 13, 2020 at 11:43 AM
Hello, first of all i wanted to say that i really like this community and i appreciate how much effort everybody puts in to push this product forward :)
I have a question currently I am building an app to catalog my private DVD and series collection. I created a private list and started to put all the movies I own there. I'm currently at a point where I'm experiencing API problems. I have more than 500 movies in this list and the v3 API shuts down at 500 movies in the request. Is there a way to request more than 500 movies? So in the API call the data object says that there are more than 500 items but it spits out with only 500 :)
Furthermore, I would be interested if there is a possibility to search a in one of my lists via request like: …/find/list_id/movie_id or something? Then I could save myself the trouble of requesting 500 movies and go directly through the v4 API with the pager. But I have to be able to search in my list somehow.
Do you have an idea?
Looking forward to discuss that with you all 
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 15, 2020 at 5:27 PM
Hi @mmaihoff,
In order to get all of your list items, you'll have to use v4, like you pointed out. But, if all you're trying to do is check if a certain item is on your list, there actually is a method that you can use to do that. Check out the docs for v4's /item_status method. You pass it a
media_typeandmedia_idand the response will indicate if it's present or not. Would that work?Reply by mmaihoff
on January 16, 2020 at 6:36 AM
hey hey @travisbell, i know the fact that "item_status" responses the status of an movie item but that means if i use that on a global search that i need to request every single item twice. the first request gets me the movies by title and then i need to put the requested items id to send another request to get the item status this could be a bit overwhelming on a performance persepctive. Or is there another way to use the "…search/multi?…" enpoint to get both the item status and the results together?
if i request my list by using the "…4/list/list_id" endpoint i am not able to search in the whole list because the request is paged. And also to loop trough all pages and combine the results in an array is really inperformanced.
any ideas here? :)
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 17, 2020 at 12:39 PM
Ok, so technically there is actually another "behind the scenes" param you can use, but it can only be used when you specify a custom sort order like
popularity.desc. You can usewith_text_query. Check it:You'll see that only Birdman is returned in the results array. Does that help you?
Reply by mmaihoff
on January 20, 2020 at 7:12 AM
Uhhhh great … i will check this out soon!!! Thanks a lot :)
Reply by mmaihoff
on February 3, 2020 at 6:51 PM
@travisbell that works perfect for my needs! thank you