Python script to consume the OMDb API | Daily Python #15

This article is a tutorial on how to consume the Open Movie Database API using Python.

This article is a part of Daily Python challenge that I have taken up for myself. I will be writing short python articles daily.

Create an account on the OMDb website: http://www.omdbapi.com/. After this step, you will receive an API key via email. This API Key will be used for further communication with the OMDb API.

Requirements:

1. Python 3.0
2. Pip

Install the following packages:

1. requests — Library to making HTTP requests.
2. pprint — Library for printing structures of data in a formatted way.

pip install requests pprint

Let’s import these libraries

import requests
from pprint import PrettyPrinter
pp = PrettyPrinter()

The ‘pp’ instance of PrettyPrinter will be used to beautify the JSON output.

Let’s store the API Key in a variable to be used in the program

apiKey = 'YOUR_OMDb_API_KEY'

Now, we simply request data from the OMDb data API

Parameters for the Search API

One easy method to pass these params to the URL is to store them in a dictionary and pass it to the get() method provided by requests module.

#Fetch Movie Data
data_URL = 'http://www.omdbapi.com/?apikey='+apiKey
year = ''
movieTitle = 'Fast & Furious'
params = {
    's':movieTitle,
    'type':'movie',
    'y':year    
}

Let’s search for a series by changing the ‘type’ parameter

#Fetch Series Data
data_URL = 'http://www.omdbapi.com/?apikey='+apiKey
year = ''
series = 'Friends'
params = {
    's':series,
    'type':'series',
    'y':year    
}

Snip of the Output of the above code snippet

Poster from the returned response

Let’s search for a movie with a full plot

#Fetch Movie Data with Full Plot 
data_URL = 'http://www.omdbapi.com/?apikey='+apiKey
year = ''
movie = 'Fast & Furious' 
params = {
    't':movie,
    'type':'movie',
    'y':year,
    'plot':'full'
}
response = requests.get(data_URL,params=params).json()
pp.pprint(response)

Snip of the Output of the above code

Poster from the returned response

I hope this article was helpful, do leave some claps if you liked it.

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Ajinkya-Sonawane/Daily-Python

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