TimeMagazine / movie-data

Actor and movie data from IMDB in nice JSON files

#IMDB to JSON

This is a simple scraper that converts the relevant parts of an actor or movie page on IMDB to a JSON document. Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request if there are parts of the page that we have not yet added to the scraper.

This module uses downcache to store a local copy of each requested page on your local machine.

Installation

npm install

Command Line Usage

# movie by vernacular name
node index.js movie --name="The Godfather" > thegodfather.json

# actor by vernacular name
node index.js actor --name="Julianne Moore" > julianne_moore.json

# movie by IDMB id
node index.js movie --id=tt0074281 > carwash.json

# actor by IDMB id
node index.js actor --id=nm0001640 > richard_pryor.json

In the first two cases, the script uses the undocumented IMDB search API to resolve the input to a page. It's anecdotally very accurate, but be careful if you're running a large number of names through it to check them afterward.

API Usage

var imdb = require("movie-data");

imdb.actor_by_id("nm0001640", function(actor) {
	console.log(actor);
});

// other methods are "actor", "movie", "movie_by_id"

Downcache usage

By default, downcache creates a local directory named "cache" for storing the HTML pages you request. You can adjust downcache's settings from the parent script if you so desire:

var imdb = require("movie-data"),
	downcache = require("downcache");

downcache.set({
	dir: "/Users/myname/Desktop/movies/",
	log: "verbose"
});	


imdb.movie("Mean Girls", function(movie) {
	console.log(movie);
});

##JSON

The JSON should be fairly self explanatory. Here's are condensed examples:

{ id: 'tt0068646',
  name: 'The Godfather',
  date: '1972',
  imdb_photo: 'http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjEyMjcyNDI4MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDA5Mzg3OA@@._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg',
  info: 
   { director: [ [Object] ],
     writers: [ [Object], [Object] ],
     stars: [ [Object], [Object], [Object] ] },
  actors: 
   [ { name: 'Marlon Brando',
       id: 'nm0000008',
       character: 'Don Vito Corleone' },
     { name: 'Al Pacino',
       id: 'nm0000199',
       character: 'Michael Corleone' },
     { name: 'James Caan',
       id: 'nm0001001',
       character: 'Sonny Corleone' },
     { name: 'Richard S. Castellano',
       id: 'nm0144710',
   ...

And an actor readout:

{ id: 'nm0000194',
  name: 'Julianne Moore',
  imdb_photo: 'http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTM5NDI1MjE2Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNDE0Nzk0MDE@._V1_SY317_CR7,0,214,317_AL_.jpg',
  movies: 
   [ { year: '2015',
       name: 'Maggie's Plan',
       id: 'tt3471098',
       characters: {},
       type: 'Movie',
       status: 'filming' },
     { year: '2015',
       name: 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2',
       id: 'tt1951266',
       characters: [Object],
       type: 'Movie',
       status: 'post-production' },
     { year: '2015',
       name: 'Freeheld',
       id: 'tt1658801',
       characters: [Object],
       type: 'Movie',
       status: 'post-production' },
     { year: '2014/I',
       name: 'Seventh Son',
       id: 'tt1121096',
       characters: [Object],
       type: 'Movie',
       status: null },
     { year: '2014',
       name: 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1',
       id: 'tt1951265',
       characters: [Object],
       type: 'Movie',
       status: null },
     { year: '2014',
       name: 'Still Alice',
       id: 'tt3316960',
       characters: [Object],
       type: 'Movie',
       status: null },
     { year: '2014',
       name: 'Maps to the Stars',
       id: 'tt2172584',
       characters: [Object],
       type: 'Movie',
       status: null },
     { year: '1987',
       name: 'I'll Take Manhattan',
       id: 'tt0092378',
       characters: [Object],
       type: 'TV Mini-Series',
       status: null } ],
  stats: 
   { 'Date of Birth': 
      { birth_monthday: '12-3',
        birth_year: '1960',
        birth_place: 'Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA' },
     'Birth Name': 'Julie Anne Smith',
     Nickname: 'Juli',
     Height: '5\' 4" (1.63 m)' } }