*NIX command line tool for retrieving IMDb movie information

Usage:

First set up an alias for the command:

alias imdbtool="python /path/to/imdbtool.py"

Some interesting usage examples:

Show all info about movie 'Cars'

imdbtool -t Cars

Show all info about latest 'True Grit' movie

imdbtool -t "True Grit"

Show all info about 1969 version of 'True Grit'

imdbtool -t "True Grit" -y 1969

Show best guess for a misspelled name

imdbtool -t "Ture git"

Print movie's rating

imdbtool -t Cars | sed -n '/^imdbrating/{n;p;}'

Download movie's poster

imdbtool -t Cars | wget `sed -n '/^poster/{n;p;}'`

Additional useful features:

Include full plot summary (not available for some movies)

imdbtool -t "True Grit" --plot full

Include additional data from Rotten Tomatoes

imdbtool -t "True Grit" --tomatoes

Show info by IMDb id

imdbtool -i tt0103064

Print raw JSON or XML data

imdbtool -t Cars -r JSON

Example to get ratings for all movies in current directory (it will use directory and file names as movie titles):

Save following code to file get_ratings.sh (make sure to update the path in line 3):

ls -1 | 
while read title; do
  res=`python /path/to/imdbtool.py -t "$title"`
  rating=`echo "$res" | sed -n '/^imdbrating/{n;p;}'`
  restitle=`echo "$res" | sed -n '/^title/{n;p;}' | sed s/*//g`
  year=`echo "$res" | sed -n '/^year/{n;p;}'`
  echo "$title  *  $restitle  *  $year  *  $rating"
done

Then execute the saved command to fetch all the ratings: ./get_ratings.sh > ratings.txt (it'll take a while to retrieve all the data). Then you can open the ratings.txt file to see the movie ratings, or you can sort the movies by ratings to pick the best one to watch: < ratings.txt sort -t* -k4 -r

Notes

• requires Python 3.X
• thanks to creator of this great site called IM-D-BAPI

I was aware of this existing tool but unfortunately it was broken at the time I tried it. My implementation relies on the third-party API that handles up to 2 million queries a day, so it's safe to assume that it's author will be keeping it up to date. On the other hand, IMDb has jumped onto the douchebag bandwagon and issued a cease and desist order to the creator of the IMDBAPI, so it might stop working any time.

License

This tool is licensed under GNU Lesser GPL license.