R Open Movie Database API

Ever wanted to get movie information in R?

This is a test package for UBC STAT547, but is fully functional and allows you to extract movie information (e.g., plot summary, ratings, actors) using the Open Movie Database API.

Note: requires an active internet connection to use.

Usage

Install the package from Github:

install_github("sho-87/Romdb")

If it complains about packages not being found (e.g. stringi, curl), you'll need to manually install those packages before running install_github:

install.packages("curl")

install.packages("stringi")

Load it into your R session:

library(Romdb)

Search Movie

You can search OMDb with a search string to see movies that share the same/a similar name:

results <- search_movie("matrix")

Note: a string must be passed to the function.

The above will return a dataframe containing movies with a matching name, plus any relevant information about the movie.

The returned dataframe contains:

• Title
  • Name of the movie
• Type
  • Media type of that item. In addition to movies, OMDb also stores information about TV Shows and Video games
• Year
  • Year of release
• imdbID
  • The IMDB id of the selected item
• Poster
  • A link to the movie poster

Get Movie

If you know the specific movie name you're interested in, you can query the database for just that film and extract all information associated with it:

movie <- get_movie("Frozen")

Note: a string must be passed to the function.

This returns a list containing information about the movie.

The following information is available for each movie:

• Title
  • Name of the movie
• Year
  • Year of release
• Rated
  • The IMDB id of the selected item
• Released
  • Release data
• Runtime
  • Total movie runtime
• Genre
  • Genre(s) of the movie
• Director
  • Movie director(s)
• Writer
  • Movie writer(s)
• Actors
  • Movie actor(s)
• Plot
  • Brief plot summary
• Language
  • Original movie language
• Country
  • Country of origin
• Awards
  • Awards nominated for/won
• Poster
  • Link to the movie poster
• Metascore
  • Movie metascore, aggregated over multiple movie rating websites
• imdbRating
  • Movie rating on IMDB
• imdbVotes
  • Number of votes received on IMDB
• imdbID
  • Identifier for IMDB
• Type
  • Type of media
• tomatoMeter
  • Percentage of critics that gave movie a positive review
• tomatoImage
  • Review image type on rotten tomatoes
• tomatoRating
  • Movie rating by critics out of 10
• tomatoReviews
  • Number of critic reviews
• tomatoFresh
  • Number of positive reviews
• tomatoRotten
  • Number of negative reviews
• tomatoConsensus
  • General consensus about the movie by reviewers
• tomatoUserMeter
  • Percentage of users that liked the movie
• tomatoUserRating
  • User score out of 5
• tomatoUserReviews
  • Number of user reviews
• DVD
  • DVD release date
• BoxOffice
  • Box office gross
• Production
  • Production company
• Website
  • Movie website

To extract only specific variables from the list use the $ syntax in R

Examples

library(Romdb)

searchResults <- search_movie("hunger games")

hungerGamesMovie <- get_movie("The Hunger Games")

hungerGamesMovie$Plot

hungerGamesMovie$tomatoRating

hungerGamesMovie$Metascore