IMDB/CDDB

[Barry]

Happy Holidays/New Year to all:

I am building a database to catalog my videos and DVD's. Getting all the
info from either the pamphlet or end of the movie is getting rather tedious.
Is there anyway to get the info directly from IMDB for video and CDDB for
music? Just trying to save time and aggravation. Please let me know if you
have any solutions or additional questions.

Thanks,

Barry

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

I am building a database to catalog my videos and DVD's. Getting all the
info from either the pamphlet or end of the movie is getting rather tedious.
Is there anyway to get the info directly from IMDB for video and CDDB for
music? Just trying to save time and aggravation. Please let me know if you
have any solutions or additional questions.

Search those sites looking for developer or API (application
programming interface).

Amazon have a similar program which would likely suffice. For free.
Do a search for Amazon Web Services at their site.

I know there have been some folks using that in conjunction with
Access however I'm unable to locate any links. If you're interested
I'd suggest starting another thread with Amazon in the title.

There are way too many hits on "microsoft access" amazon soa to wade
through to find the code samples I know exist somewhere.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/

 

[Barry]

Tony:

Thanks for the reply. I'm far from an expert coder and the API may be
somewhat over my head. I was indeed hoping to see some examples. If you run
accross anything I would be most grateful for the heads up.

Thanks again and Happy Holidays,

Barry

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

Thanks for the reply. I'm far from an expert coder and the API may be
somewhat over my head. I was indeed hoping to see some examples. If you run
accross anything I would be most grateful for the heads up.

I asked my fellow MVPs and was pointed to the following sample code
which was demo'd to us MVPs.

http://www.utteraccess.com/forums/s...e=&Zu=&Zd=l&Zn=&Zt=1&Zs=a&Zy=#Post1381175&Zp=

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/

 

[Barry]

Tony
That's some cool stuff. I'm not sure at quick glance if I understand it all
but, it is certainly a thought in the right direction. Do you know if IMDB
has a similar type of product? Most of my interest lies in filling in data
for my movie database. Year, length, stars, reviews etc.

Thanks again and enjoy the holiday,

Barry

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

That's some cool stuff. I'm not sure at quick glance if I understand it all
but, it is certainly a thought in the right direction. Do you know if IMDB
has a similar type of product? Most of my interest lies in filling in data
for my movie database. Year, length, stars, reviews etc.

No idea. I did a quick search on IMDB but couldn't see anything. So
you'll have to spend the time doing a more detailed search. I'd also
suggest asking in their forums.

If you do find something though please post back here for others to
benefit from your research.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/

 

[Barry]

Tony:
Thanks again. I will post anything I find.

Barry

 

[David W. Fenton]

No idea. I did a quick search on IMDB but couldn't see anything.
So you'll have to spend the time doing a more detailed search.
I'd also suggest asking in their forums.

If you do find something though please post back here for others
to benefit from your research.

I didn't have much trouble finding this:

http://imdb.com/help/show_leaf?usedatasoftware

That refers you here:

http://www.imdb.com/interfaces

And there you get links to the FTP sites that make the text files
available.

And that's it.

In short, there is no API to their database that is available
without licensing (and it's not clear that there's one even then).

The text files that you're allowed to get for personal use are in a
format that's not very easy to use with a database. Yes, you could
write routines to parse them. Maybe ADO could do something with them
with its magical routines for dealing with unstructured data. But it
doesn't look possible to me without a whole lot of work. For what
you're looking for, you're likely to do better with the Amazon API,
though I don't know what you'd use for looking up the CDs and DVDs
(i.e., is there an ISBN-like number for CDs and DVDs?).

 

[Barry]

David:
I have seen numbers of programs that get all the data (and I'm assuming from
IMDB) including artwork. Programs like Media player use online databases (i
also assumed CDDB) to get song titiles, artists etc. So many applications
like these, I just wanted to have one I could call my own. I can't believe
that the nearly thousands of people who have written DVD/VHS catalog programs
have a license agreement with IMDB. Perhaps I'm delusional.

Thanks for the info,
Barry

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

GIven that the license agreement is free, I see no reason why "the nearly
thousands of people who have written DVD/VHS catalog programs" wouldn't do
so legally.

I've signed the license agreement with Gracenote at
https://doors.gracenote.com/developer/lic/ for my own personal use.

 

[Barry]

Doug:
I never would have thought that the licenses would be free. Thanks for that
information. I will most definately take a closer look at the licensing
structure.

Thanks,
Barry