The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
No results when searcing for a title including a number
posted by Peter DzomlijaSTAFFMOD on July 21, 2017 at 7:43 PM
I've not encountered this problem until now, but when I use the API in my program to search for a movie, and the title of that particular movie includes a number, then I get no results. I also notice this happens when searching on the Web.
To be clear, the movie that made be notice this error is "Death Race 5050", found on the following addresses:
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/401544-death-race-2050
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5493706/
When my program generates the API Search URL and I include the full title of the movie, then I get no results:
https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/movie?api_key=MY_API_KEY&query=death+race+5050
If I remove the "5050" numbers from the title, then the search is executed correctly:
https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/movie?api_key=MY_API_KEY&query=death+race
Is there something I'm missing when generating the URL that allows me to include numbers in the query, or does the API just not permit it at all?
Reply by Travis Bell
on July 21, 2017 at 9:54 PM
Hi Peter,
Are you looking for Death Race 5050 or 2050? Searching for Death Race 2050 is working properly on both the website and the API:
https://www.themoviedb.org/search/movie?query=death%20race%202050
But you mentioned 5050 which I don't think is a movie in the DB.
Reply by Peter Dzomlija
on July 22, 2017 at 6:42 PM
Thanks for the feedback, Travis.
You didn't say much, but it was enough to have me look elsewhere for a solution to my problem.
And I did indeed find a bug while parsing the JSON results from a search, and applying those results to the metadata properties of a movie (using the "TProperties" object code).
Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that the TProperties.Metadata.Title of the movies was set to "Death Race 2050 (2017)". The code would extract and remove "(2017)" from the title and compile a default release date of 2017-01-01, until such time as a proper release date can be retrieved from the JSON search results. The bug I discovered was that it would continue to extract a year value, even if one was already found, thus it would remove "2050" (in this example) from the title also.
I've changed the way in which Movies Manager extracts default release dates, and the issue I mentioned in my opening post seems to have been resolved also, because now even the search results dialog properly displays the full movie titles ("Death Race 2050" instead of only "Death Race").
Ironic, that the biggest problems can be the result of the smallest unrelated oversight.
Again, thanks for the feedback.
Reply by Travis Bell
on July 22, 2017 at 11:49 PM
No problem! Happy to hear I inadvertently helped you!
Reply by PandaDouxYT
on November 21, 2024 at 3:05 AM
I have an issue: If I make this request: https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/multi?api_key=X&query=un%20petit%20truc%20en%20plus It says: no results.
But if I change "petit" to "p'tit," like this: https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/multi?api_key=X&query=un%20p'tit%20truc%20en%20plus It finds an exact match for the movie I'm searching for.
However, on the website https://www.themoviedb.org/search?query=un+petit+truc+en+plus with "petit," it finds the movie titled "p'tit" without any issue.
My query is essentially the same. Is it possible to use something like %LIKE% or how do they make it work?