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Note: This is a University assignment.

I am to develop a client and server program (using Perl) to deal with client requests and server-side functionality.

The server is to access an API for a website that uses XML to provide critical reviews for any form of media. Not only should the API be able to return information such as movie title, year etc. but also the details of critical reviews such as the person who wrote it, the score, their comments and be able to construct connections between reviewers and all the items they have reviewed.

The client is then to receive this data from my server and output it in a way that is readable across multiple large and small screen devices.

The assignment documentation suggested the following websites -

  • IMDB - Does not have a DOCUMENTED API of any kind
  • The TV Database - API only provides title information, nothing to do with reviews
  • Metacritic - No API
  • Rotten Tomatoes - Only works with JSON, no XML

I have also tried a couple of 3rd party IMDB API's such as deanclatworthy.com/imdb/ and www.omdbapi.com but they only do not provide any kind of review/reviewer information.

Does anyone have any suggestions for any kind of critical review site that provides XML API data on the subject as well as the reviewers?

MrLore
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mansonitefirefox
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  • Check out this [answer](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1966503/does-imdb-provide-an-api). It looks like IMDB does have an xml interface. [eg](http://www.imdb.com/xml/find?xml=1&nr=1&tt=on&q=lost). – John C May 24 '14 at 05:03
  • Do you know of any other documentation for that? A way to get it to return review information etc.? – mansonitefirefox May 24 '14 at 05:08
  • It sounds like you are supposed to write your own server that responds to a client in xml. What would be the point of writing a server that just queries another server? – John C May 24 '14 at 05:11
  • Because its a university assignment. Doing things a stupidly overcomplicated way as a means of displaying things we have learnt is more important than doing things the proper way as far as lecturers are concerned. – mansonitefirefox May 24 '14 at 05:12
  • I don't know how much restricted you are to Perl but I wrote [a wrapper](https://github.com/Vannevelj/TVDBSharp/blob/master/TVDBSharp/Examples/DisplayShowDetails.cs) for the TVDB API for .NET which includes fields like *Rating* and *Number of Votes*. You can write your own if that's all you need (note that this data is retrieved from IMDb). – Jeroen Vannevel May 25 '14 at 14:40

1 Answers1

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The best way to find the answer to your question is to look for a 'web services directory' on google.

I did that and it lead me to the new york times movie reviews api:

programmableweb

Which looks to be just what you are searching for.

John C
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