CODEWITHSUNDEEP
json
brainmassage
brainmassage

Reputation: 1254

How do people create unofficial api's (which provide json info) for big websites such as imdb?

Such as this api here: http://www.omdbapi.com/

Do they just parse the whole website's HTML and save fields on their own database?

What is a good design, programming-wise?

My simple java developer mentality says this:

1 - Use jsoup (or any other html parsing library) and save the data frequently.

2 - Create restful services that return json, such as "searchByMovieName()", "searchByActor"

3 - Make the services public

Is it simple as that?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 517

Answers (2)

JOpolka
JOpolka

Reputation: 121

IMDB also offers files you can use directly: Alternative Interfaces

Upvotes: 0

Justin Niessner
Justin Niessner

Reputation: 245479

It can be, yes.

You can also fetch the pages and scrape the data in real-time (as people call your API). It'll be a little slower but there's less overhead for you and you don't need to worry about stale data.

Upvotes: 2

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