tmdbsimple

A wrapper for The Movie Database API v3

tmdbsimple is a wrapper, written in Python, for The Movie Database (TMDb) API v3. By calling the functions available in tmdbsimple you can simplify your code and easily access a vast amount of movie, tv, and cast data. To learn more about The Movie Database API, check out the overview and documentation.

Features

• COMPLETELY UPDATED AND FULLY TESTED.
• Supports only Python versions with TLS 1.2. Keep it simple!
• Tested with Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, and 3.13.
• One-to-one mapping between tmdbsimple methods and TMDb endpoints.
• Implements all TMDb methods, including Accounts and Authentication.
• Easy to access data using Python class attributes.
• Easy to experiment with tmdbsimple functions inside the Python interpreter.
• Code tested with unittests. Refer to the unittest code for method call syntax.

Installation

tmdbsimple is available on the Python Package Index (PyPI) at https://pypi.python.org/pypi/tmdbsimple.

You can install tmdbsimple using one of the following techniques.

• Use pip:

pip install tmdbsimple

• Download the .zip or .tar.gz file from PyPI and install it yourself
• Download the source from Github and install it yourself

If you install it yourself, also install requests.

API Key

You will need an API key to The Movie Database to access the API. To obtain a key, follow these steps:

1. Register for and verify an account.
2. Log into your account.
3. Select the API section on left side of your account page.
4. Click on the link to generate a new API key and follow the instructions.

Examples

Once you have the tmdbsimple package installed and a TMDb API key, you can start to play with the data.

First, import the library and assign your API_KEY.

import tmdbsimple as tmdb
tmdb.API_KEY = 'YOUR_API_KEY_HERE'

Optionally, set a timeout for requests. See here for more info.

tmdb.REQUESTS_TIMEOUT = 5  # seconds, for both connect and read

or

tmdb.REQUESTS_TIMEOUT = (2, 5)  # seconds, for connect and read specifically 

Optionally, configure the library to use your own REQUESTS_SESSION. See here for more info.

import requests
tmdb.REQUESTS_SESSION = requests.Session()

Optionally, configure the library to use bearer token authentication instead of the default API key query parameter. This may be useful if you encounter authorization issues with the default method.

tmdb.USE_BEARER_AUTH = True

To communicate with The Movie Database API, create an instance of one of the object types, call one of the methods on the instance, and access the instance attributes. Use keys to access the values of attributes that are dictionaries. In this example, we create a movie instance for 'The Matrix' and determine the budget and certification.

    >>> movie = tmdb.Movies(603)
    >>> response = movie.info()
    >>> movie.title
    'The Matrix'
    >>> movie.budget
    63000000
    >>> response = movie.releases()
    >>> for c in movie.countries:
    ...    if c['iso_3166_1'] == 'US':
    ...         print(c['certification'])
    ...
    'R'

Let's play with the interface a bit more. Suppose you and your friend are arguing over which movie in the Bourne series was most popular. Your friend says the first in a series is always most popular. You disagree.

    >>> search = tmdb.Search()
    >>> response = search.movie(query='The Bourne')
    >>> for s in search.results:
    ...     print(s['title'], s['id'], s['release_date'], s['popularity'])
    ...
    The Bourne Ultimatum 2503 2007-08-03 55.2447062124256
    The Bourne Supremacy 2502 2004-07-23 43.4553609681985
    The Bourne Identity 2501 2002-06-06 38.5531563780592
    The Bourne Legacy 49040 2012-08-10 9.90635210153143
    The Bourne Identity 8677 1988-05-08 1.53988446573129
    Bette Bourne: It Goes with the Shoes 179304  0.23

You are correct! Now you claim the producers should be able to make sequels cheaper, based on what they learned from making the first movie. To be fair, you compute the budget per minute of runtime. Your friend disagrees, claiming the producers spend more money trying to out do the previous sequel.

    >>> identity = tmdb.Movies(2501)
    >>> response = identity.info()
    >>> identity.budget, identity.runtime
    (60000000, 119)
    >>> int(identity.budget/identity.runtime)
    504201
    >>> supremacy = tmdb.Movies(2502)
    >>> response = supremacy.info()
    >>> supremacy.budget, supremacy.runtime
    (75000000, 108)
    >>> int(supremacy.budget/supremacy.runtime)
    694444
    >>> ultimatum = tmdb.Movies(2503)
    >>> response = ultimatum.info()
    >>> ultimatum.budget, ultimatum.runtime
    (70000000, 115)
    >>> int(ultimatum.budget/ultimatum.runtime)
    608695

In this case you are both correct. The third movie was cheaper than the second, which was more expensive than the first.

You also can call one of the methods without explicitly instanciating an object.

    >>> response = tmdb.Movies(603).info()
    >>> response['budget']
    63000000

If you use Authentication to access a user Account, be sure to check out https://developer.themoviedb.org/docs/authentication-user.

If you like this wrapper, and would like access to even more movie and TV data, check out rtsimple https://pypi.python.org/pypi/rtsimple, a wrapper for the Rotten Tomatoes API.