The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Random page and movie, question
posted by matzaddSTAFFMOD on January 29, 2018 at 6:52 AM
Hi Movie dB,
I am trying to pull random movies, using discover, by using a random page number [1 to 1000] and then a random number on page [1 to 20]. This works great.
The problem is there are many more pages than a thousand [17836 at time of writing this]. So I am only seaching a fraction of the dB. The API usage limits page selection to = < 1000, which is 'by design', after checking a few previous posts on that topic.
how do I search the entire dB if I cant go past page 1000?
Thanks, Matt
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 30, 2018 at 4:02 AM
Hi @matzadd,
If you're only looking for a random movie, I wouldn't use discover. Just hit the movie id method directly, with your random number. You can check the /latest method to know which ID to not go above.
There will also be lots of gaps in the ID space which will 404. If you have the ability to process some local ids, I suggest taking a look at the daily ID exports since that way you'll know the IDs that exist. Alternatively, you can just loop until you get a status 200.
Reply by matzadd
on January 30, 2018 at 4:42 AM
Really appreciate the help Travis, Thank You!
Matt