I'm a big fan of The Internet Movie Database. The other day I wanted to share my voting history with a friend but couldn't find a publicly visible URI. So i ended up hacking my own Film Voting History page.
Interestingly although my votes can differ quite wildly to the IMDB score, overall my average vote matches that of the IMDB membership. Just call me Mr Average!
To create your own Film Voting History Page for your MovableType site save ImdbVoteHistory.pl as a '.pl' file in your plugins directory and then put the following tags in of your MT templates:
<MTImdb id="FsdFSfSFDFsdfsdfsdf.....">
<table>
<tr>
<th align='left'>Film</th>
<th>Vote</th>
<th>IMDB</th>
</tr>
<MTImdbVoteHistory>
<tr>
<td><a href='<$MTImdbVoteLink$>'><$MTImdbVoteName$></a></td>
<td><$MTImdbVoteMyValue$></td>
<td><$MTImdbVoteImdbValue$></td>
</tr>
</MTImdbVoteHistory>
<tr>
<th>Average over <$MTImdbVoteCount$> films:</th>
<th><$MTImdbVoteMyAverage$></th>
<th><$MTImdbVoteImdbAverage$></th>
</tr>
</table>
Where id is the imdb.com 'id' cookie - you can find this by digging around in your browser cache.
This module parses the HTML from the IMDB site using a regular expression. I've tried to make the regex as flexible as possible, but as with any page scraping, it will break if imdb.com radically alter their site.
To ensure you get all the votes and the regex gets both your vote and the average score, on the IMDB "your vote history page", click on "Change display options for this category" then set:
Show (x) All titles
Show (x) Your votes
Show
DVD available to buy ( )
VHS available to buy ( )
CD available to buy ( )
On TV ( )
Showtimes ( )
IMDb Votes (x)
so the vote history page is a list with three columns: "title", "your-votes", "imdb-votes".
16-12-2004: Imdb added a year column, so had to fix this - download the latest version (0.2) of the script
What! No Fargo?
Whoa Daddy, that gets a 10 in my book, you betcha!
It would be nice if the IMDB username could be used instead of digging for a cookie value. :)
IMDB don't make it easy, the alternative is to
add your username/password to the template and
for the plugin to do two fetches, one to get
the cookie, then a second to get the info ..
Paul
Hmmm odd I can't seem to get it to work... I have found what I believe to be the "ID cookie", but it won't rebuild --- The value should look something like this right -
Fn0JMLIgQPcecwe************SdA5Gglw==
Thanks,
Jeff
I wanted to to this for a long time, and you did it perfectly -- just like my desires :-) Amazing, thank you very much!
Jeff, your cookie is fine, but as discussed - you need to change your IMDB vote history settings to include the IMDB score. I've updated the instructions to include this advice.
Now if we can just get it to grab "My Movies" lists, I'd be all set!
Great plugin, been using it for ages. However I've been getting more and more plagued with a 500 Server error. Tracked it down though, it's the IMDB Vote History plugin!
Anyone reported any bugs with it?
Nice work, just installed :) Thanks!
Happy New Year. I love this script and use to update my master list (all the movies I've seen in my life). But I've been trying to figure out how to use this script to add all my movies and ratings to a MySql database, so I have more flexibility with my collection - like adding comments, photos, etc.
Any ideas?
I've been combing the net over and over for something like this.....any chances of making this work in WordPress version 2.0.2? I'm a WordPress user, of course....
The link for the script doesn't work :-(