The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
with_release_type parameter in search
posted by Romain_lfbSTAFFMOD on May 23, 2023 at 12:53 PM
Hi,
For some time now, I've been specifying the with_release_type parameter when searching for movies and series so it would not return a theatrical premiere date by default. I don't believe this was explicitly documented for search so I'm not necessarily surprised it broke. It was documented here for discover. In any case, it would be a positive addition to search.
When displaying search results, I only want to display the release date that matters to users: the theatrical or digital release for their region. That's because it's not helpful to most users to see a premiere or limited (re)release by default, without knowing it is one.
Unless I'm mistaken, calling the following worked fine until recently. It would only return a type 3 and 4 release date or default to the US date if not. This does not seem to work any longer.
/search/movie?language=\(languageCode)&query=\(input)®ion=\(regionCode)&with_release_type=3,4
For "The Godfather Part III" for example, the following search returns 2020, a limited theatrical re-release, instead of the 1990 original release.
https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/movie?query=godfather®ion=US&with_release_type=3,4
I'm aware that not specifying a region would solve this problem for users in the US but then it would show incorrect dates for everyone else. In general, I feel premieres and limited releases should be treated as outliers instead of the default. Would you consider a tweak to this behaviour?
Reply by Romain_lfb
on March 25, 2024 at 2:51 PM
@travisbell Is this something that's on your radar? Users still complain of this behaviour and there's nothing I can do, as far as I know.
There are two possible solutions I can see:
Reply by Travis Bell
on March 27, 2024 at 11:45 AM
Hey @Romain_lfb,
I'll have to give a think as to whether we want to enable
with_release_typeor not but in the meantime, just so you are aware,regiondoes work.Reply by Romain_lfb
on March 28, 2024 at 7:14 AM
Appreciate the consideration @travisbell !
To clarify my comment about
region, it definitely works but interestingly, not providing it can give better results. To keep "The Godfather Part III" as an example, specifying US as a region returns 2020 but not specifying US returns 1990. Of course that works for the US in this case but wouldn't really scale to other regions.I don't know whether that "default" release date is calculated on the fly or manually entered but it'd be cool if the release date returned for any region followed the same underlying logic as this would ensure it's relevant to all users.