ruby-tmdb is an ActiveRecord-style API wrapper for TheMovieDB.org (TMDb). ruby-tmdb is designed to make common tasks much easier than they would be if dealing directly with the URL based API.

gem install ruby-tmdb

require 'rubygems'
require 'ruby-tmdb'

# setup your API key
Tmdb.api_key = "t478f8de5776c799de5a"

@movie = TmdbMovie.find(:title => "Iron Man", :limit => 1)
# => <OpenStruct>

@movie.name
# => "Iron Man"

@movie.posters.length
# => 12

@movie.posters.first.data
# => [binary blob representing JPEG]

ruby-tmdb provides 2 main objects that you will use to query the API

TmdbMovie
TmdbCast

These objects provide access to movie and cast listing respectively.

Each object provides a find() method which accepts a number of options:

TmdbMovie.find(:id => 123, :title => "fight club", :imdb => 'tt0401792', :limit => 10, :expand_results => true)

:id

specifies an individual movie via it’s TMDb id

:title

specifies a query string to look for in the movie titles

:imdb

specifies an idividual movie via it’s IMDB id

:limit

specifies the maximum number of results to be returned

:expand_results

The TMDb API by default returns only partial info for any API method that can return multiple results. When :expand_results is set to true ruby-tmdb automatically makes extra API calls to fetch the full information for each item. This can result in very slow requests though. If you only need basic information for a search listing then set this to false. Defaults to ‘true’.

TmdbCast.find( :id => 123, :name => "Brad", :limit => 1, :expand_results => true)

:id

specifies an idividual cast member via their TMDb id

:name

specifies a query string to look for in the cast names

:limit

see TmdbMovie

:expand_results

see TmdbMovie

Find all movies whose titles match a given string:

@movies = TmdbMovie.find(:title => 'Iron Man')

Find the movie most likely to be associated with a given title:

@movie = TmdbMovie.find(:title => 'Sin City', :limit => 1)

Find a single movie by it’s TMDb ID:

@movie = TmdbMovie.find(:id => 187)

Find a single movie by it’s IMDB ID:

@movie = TmdbMovie.find(:imdb => 'tt0401792')

Find all cast members whose names match a given string:

@actors = TmdbCast.find(:name => 'Fred')

Find an individual cast member via their TMDb ID:

@actor = TmdbCast.find(:id => 101)

To find out more about the information each object offers on retrieved items have a look at the TMDb API Docs. For the most accurate information about the information available have a look at the data directly through ruby-tmdb by calling @item.raw_data.inspect

Author

Aaron Gough

Copyright © 2010 Aaron Gough (thingsaaronmade.com), released under the MIT license