No API For IMDB

As my group and I have been working on our project we have learned that the IMDB does not have an API. This really has surprised me because they are not a service that charges a fee to use so why not provide an API for users? I read some articles that the IMDB is looking for someone to develop one. What irritates me is that the IMBD is part of Amazon and Amazon has an API. How hard could it be to add the IMBD?

My group and I have been looking for a replacement for the IMDB. We have found a few sites and Professor Drake emailed some information that may be helpful. The one thing I have really learned throughout this class is to not be scared to completely drop a website that will not work. There are plenty of sites out there that all do similar activities and will work for our project.

I am really looking forward to the final project being done. It is hard to believe that we are almost done. It feels like we just started. I know my group and I will get our project working. It may not be our originally list of API’s but the concept has stayed the same. This class has been an adventure. MashUps are cool ideas that can benefit not only the owner of the MashUp but also the owners of the API’s used. I think that more and more websites are going to provide API’s. Hopefully the IMDB will be one soon.

Project

I am really excited about the idea my group has come up with for out project. We are going to try to integrate four API’s that will give different information on a movie title that is entered into our application. As a big movie buff I thought of this idea and my group and Professor Drake thought it would be a good project to do. I really hope we can get it to work because I really like the concept.

What we are going to do for our project is create an application where a movie title is entered then information about the movie is pulled for the Internet Movie Database, DVD and other merchandizing information is pulled from Amazon and EBay and finally Netflix is checked to see if the DVD is availably there.

We have already started to look at the API’s we will need and it looks like we are in good shape there. Now comes the hard part of using Ajax to create our application. I am a little bit nervous about this part. Programming can be really hard and getting it all to work may be another challenge but I think my group is up to it and we will do well.