Myujth

The IMDb currently has two public APIs that are, although undocumented, very quick and reliable (used on their own site through AJAX).

1. 
   

   A statically cached search suggestions API:

   
   
   
   • http://sg.media-imdb.com/suggests/a/aa.json
   
   
   • http://sg.media-imdb.com/suggests/h/hello.json
   
   
   • Format: JSONP
   
   
   • 
     

     Downside:

     
     
     

     • It's in JSONP format, however the callback parameter can not be set by passing a callback-query parameter. In order to use it cross-domain you'll have to use the function name they choose (which is in the "imdb$searchphrase" format, see example below). Or use a local proxy (e.g. a small php file) that downloads (and caches!) it from IMDb and strips the JSON-P callback, or replaces it with a custom callback.

     
     

     • If there are no results, it doesn't gracefully fallback, but displays an XML error instead

     
     
   
   

// Basic
window.imdb$foo = function (list) 
 /* ... */
;
jQuery.getScript('http://sg.media-imdb.com/suggests/f/foo.json');

// Using jQuery.ajax (let jQuery handle the callback)
jQuery.ajax(
 url: 'http://sg.media-imdb.com/suggests/f/foo.json',
 dataType: 'jsonp',
 cache: true,
 jsonp: false,
 jsonpCallback: 'imdb$foo'
).done(function (result) 
 /* ... */
);

// With local proxy to a PHP script replacing imdb$foo with a sanitized
// version of $_GET['callback'] (https://stackoverflow.com/a/8811412/319266)
jQuery.getJSON('./imdb.php?q=foo&callback=?', function (list) 
 /* ... */
);

2. 
   

   More advanced search

   
   
   
   • Name search (json): http://www.imdb.com/xml/find?json=1&nr=1&nm=on&q=jeniffer+garner
     
   
   
   • Title search (xml): http://www.imdb.com/xml/find?xml=1&nr=1&tt=on&q=lost
     
   
   
   • Format: JSON, XML and more
   
   
   • Downside:
     
     
     • No JSONP. In order to use from JavaScript cross-domain, a local proxy is required.
     
     
     • No documentation, more formats may be available
     
     
   
   
   • Upside
     
     
     • Live search!
     
     
     • Name support for actors as well!
     
     
     • Proper fallback to empty object
     
     
   
   

As said, both of these APIs are undocumented. They could change at any time.

See also https://stackoverflow.com/a/8811412/319266, for an example of a JSON API in PHP.

new api @ http://www.omdbapi.com

edit: due to legal issues had to move the service to a new domain :)

IMDB themselves seem to distribute data, but only in text files:

http://www.imdb.com/interfaces

there are several APIs around this that you can Google. Screen scraping is explicitly forbidden.
A official API seems to be in the works, but has been that for years already.

Another legal alternative to get movie info is the Rotten-Tomatoes API (by Fandango).

What about TMDb API ?

You can search by imdb_id with Movie.imdbLookup

XBMC Media Center seems to use it

https://www.themoviedb.org/documentation/api

Yes, but not for free.

.....annual fees ranging from $15,000 to higher depending on the audience for the data and which data are being licensed.

URL :-
http://www.imdb.com/licensing/

There is a JSON API for use by mobile applications at http://app.imdb.com

However, the warning is fairly severe:

For use only by clients authorized in writing by IMDb.

Authors and users of unauthorized clients accept full legal exposure/liability for their actions.

I presume this is for those developers that pay for the licence to access the data via their API.

EDIT: Just for kicks, I wrote a client library to attempt to read the data from the API, you can find it here: api-imdb

Obviously, you should pay attention to the warning, and really, use something like TheMovieDB as a better and more open database.

Then you can use this Java API wrapper (that I wrote): api-themoviedb

https://deanclatworthy.com/tools.html is an IMDB API but has been down due to abuse.

Found this one

IMDbPY is a Python package useful to retrieve and manage the data of
the IMDb movie database about movies, people, characters and
companies.

http://imdbpy.sourceforge.net/

IMDB doesn't seem to have a direct API as of August 2016 yet but I saw many people writing scrapers and stuff above. Here is a more standard way to access movie data using box office buzz API. All responses in JSON format and 5000 queries per day on a free plan

List of things provided by the API

1. Movie Credits


2. Movie ID


3. Movie Images


4. Get movie by IMDB id


5. Get latest movies list


6. Get new releases


7. Get movie release dates


8. Get the list of translations available for a specific movie


9. Get videos, trailers, and teasers for a movie


10. Search for a movie by title


11. Also supports TV shows, games and videos

that deanclatworthy still seems to work
and there's another one: http://imdbapi.poromenos.org/

Here is a simple solution that fetches shows by name based on the query from Krinkle:

You can get around the same-origin policy by having your server fetch the URL instead of trying to fetch it directly with AJAX and you don't have to use JSONP to do it.

Javascript (jQuery):

function getShowOptionsFromName (name) 
 $.ajax(
 url: "ajax.php",
 method: "GET",
 data: q: name,
 dataType: "json"
 ).done(function(data)
 console.log(data);
 );

PHP (in file ajax.php):

$q = urlencode($_GET["q"]);
echo file_get_contents("http://www.imdb.com/xml/find?json=1&nr=1&tt=on&q=$q");

NetFilx is more of personalized media service but you can use it for public information regarding movies. It supports Javascript and OData.

Also look JMDb: The information is basically the same as you can get when using the IMDb website.

Recently at SXSWi 2012, in their "Mashery Lounge", there was a booth for an IMDB-like API called from rovi. It's not a free API, but according to the sales guy I talked to they offer either a rev share or a flat fee for usage, depending on your budget. I haven't used it yet but it seems pretty cool.

ok i found this one IMDB scraper

for C#:
http://web3o.blogspot.de/2010/11/aspnetc-imdb-scraping-api.html

PHP here:
http://web3o.blogspot.de/2010/10/php-imdb-scraper-for-new-imdb-template.html

alternatively a imdbapi.org implementation for c#:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using HtmlAgilityPack; // http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/


public class IMDBHelper


 public static imdbitem GetInfoByTitle(string Title)
 
 string url = "http://imdbapi.org/?type=xml&limit=1&title=" + Title;
 HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(url);
 req.Method = "GET";
 req.UserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; MSIE 9.0; WIndows NT 9.0; en-US))";
 string source;
 using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(req.GetResponse().GetResponseStream()))
 
 source = reader.ReadToEnd();
 
 HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
 doc.LoadHtml(source); 
 XDocument xdoc = XDocument.Parse(doc.DocumentNode.InnerHtml, LoadOptions.None);
 imdbitem i = new imdbitem();
 i.rating = xdoc.Descendants("rating").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.rating_count = xdoc.Descendants("rating_count").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.year = xdoc.Descendants("year").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.rated = xdoc.Descendants("rated").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.title = xdoc.Descendants("title").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.imdb_url = xdoc.Descendants("imdb_url").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.plot_simple = xdoc.Descendants("plot_simple").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.type = xdoc.Descendants("type").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.poster = xdoc.Descendants("poster").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.imdb_id = xdoc.Descendants("imdb_id").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.also_known_as = xdoc.Descendants("also_known_as").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.language = xdoc.Descendants("language").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.country = xdoc.Descendants("country").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.release_date = xdoc.Descendants("release_date").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.filming_locations = xdoc.Descendants("filming_locations").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.runtime = xdoc.Descendants("runtime").Select(x => x.Value).FirstOrDefault();
 i.directors = xdoc.Descendants("directors").Descendants("item").Select(x => x.Value).ToList();
 i.writers = xdoc.Descendants("writers").Descendants("item").Select(x => x.Value).ToList();
 i.actors = xdoc.Descendants("actors").Descendants("item").Select(x => x.Value).ToList();
 i.genres = xdoc.Descendants("genres").Descendants("item").Select(x => x.Value).ToList();
 return i;
 

 public class imdbitem
 
 public string rating get; set; 
 public string rating_count get; set; 
 public string year get; set; 
 public string rated get; set; 
 public string title get; set; 
 public string imdb_url get; set; 
 public string plot_simple get; set; 
 public string type get; set; 
 public string poster get; set; 
 public string imdb_id get; set; 
 public string also_known_as get; set; 
 public string language get; set; 
 public string country get; set; 
 public string release_date get; set; 
 public string filming_locations get; set; 
 public string runtime get; set; 
 public List<string> directors get; set; 
 public List<string> writers get; set; 
 public List<string> actors get; set; 
 public List<string> genres get; set; 
 

If you need TV information you can try TVmaze.com.

It's free, fast and reliable. Here is the developer page:

http://api.tvmaze.com/

Here is a Python module providing API's to get data from IMDB website

http://techdiary-viki.blogspot.com/2011/03/imdb-api.html

Im pretty confident that the application you found actually gets their information form Themoviedb.org's API(they get most of there stuff from IMDB). They have a free open API that is used alot of the movie organizer/XMBC applications.

If you want movie details api you can consider

OMDB API which is Open movies Database
Returns IBDB Rating, IMDB Votes and you can include Rotten Tomato rating too.

Or else You can use

My Api Films which allows you to search with IMDB ID and returns detailed information but it has request limits.