How to Extract IMDb Data With Python and Cinemagoer

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is the largest online database containing information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content. The online database contains millions of accurate records that you can use to perform data analysis.

Cinemagoer (formerly known as IMDbPY) is a Python library for managing and retrieving the data of the IMDb movie database. You can access data about movies, people, and companies, that can be further used for analysis.

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Installing Required Libraries

You need to install thecinemagoerPython library to access theIMDbdatabase. Run the following command in the command prompt to install the library:

You must havepip installed on your systemto install external Python libraries.

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The code used in this project is available in aGitHub repositoryand is free for you to use under the MIT license.

Extracting IMDb Data Using Python

You need to import the cinemagoer library before using it in your code.

The above code imports the cinemagoer library and creates an instance of the cinemagoer class.

python imdb search movies

Searching Movies

it’s possible to search for movies with a given (or similar) title using thesearch_movie()method. For example, if you want to search for movies having the title “rock”, you need to run the following code:

This should print out the first movie it finds, for example:

python imdb search movies by id

You can get a movie by its IMDb ID. You can then extract further information like director names, and genres. You need toloop through the listto get individual information.

In the output, you should see the name of the given movie, its director(s), and its genre(s):

python terminal output imdb search person

Searching for a Person

You can search for people using thesearch_person()method. For example, if you want to search for “Heath”, you need to run the following code:

You’ll see the name of the first matching person the search finds:

Searching Companies

you could search for companies using thesearch_company()method. For example, if you want to search for “Universal”, you need to run the following code:

You’ll get the list of all companies that have Universal in their name.

You can also retrieve a person and company data using its ID.

The output will show details of the person and the name of a company:

Finding Top and Bottom Movies

you could retrieve the data for top 250 and bottom 100 movies using theget_top250_movies()andget_bottom100_movies()methods, respectively:

In response, you’ll see the name of the best movie, and the name of the worst:

The cinemagoer library also provides some other methods likeget_top250_tv(),get_popular100_movies(), andget_top250_indian_movies().

Learn to Use Data Analytics Software Tools

Data analysis is the evaluation of data using analytical or statistical tools to extract information. The popularity of data analysis is growing every day. It’s now used by businesses, marketing companies, and sports teams. The complete process of data analytics includes defining objectives, posing questions, data collection, data scrubbing, data analysis, and concluding results.

you’re able to get datasets for your projects using Python libraries like Cinemagoer or via online platforms like Kaggle. Alongside full languages like Python and R, you can use other tools like Microsoft Excel, Tableau, and Stata to perform data analysis.

Looking to get into data analytics? Here are some tools you should learn.

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