The Movie Database Support

TMDb looks to be an incredible replacement for Letterboxd, the service I previously used. However, I did spend quite some effort registering all the movies in Letterboxd and I wouldn't like to do all of that again. It would be great if support for Letterboxd could be added. Files are exported in .csv format.

Here's are the files Letterboxd was able to export for me: https://send.firefox.com/download/3514511d564e0d17/#Fp8OfHExdssVxU6O1ZKXgQ.

Note: It might be that TMDb already has limited support, but when I uploaded my Letterboxd watchlist, TMDb refused to add them to the watchlist in my TMDb account.

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Hi @jelle619,

Thanks for stopping by. wave_tone2

Indeed, this has been mentioned a few times through the years but it is my understanding (as of the last time I looked into this ~1 year ago) that LB's exports don't contain any external IDs. And upon looking at the data in your file, indeed this seems to still be the case.

In order for a 3rd party like TMDb to be able to import data from a CSV like this, we would need an ID to match. Since LB is a TMDb user, it would be great if it was a TMDb ID but even another external like IMDb would be fine.

Unfortunately, until then it makes building an import for LB nearly impossible to do. Maybe you can ask them to add an ID to their exports?

Understandable.

The exported files do contain URLs that lead to the movie's page on Letterboxd which do hold TMDb and IMDb information. For TMDb is particular, these two would be the most reliable ways:

  • Some elements, always at least one, on the page hold the data-tmdb-id attribute which in all instances is equal to the ID of the movie on TMDb.
  • The link to the TMDb page of the movie is mentioned in the anchor with attribute data-track-action="TMDb"

I know it's not perfect, and it requires retrieving the page of every single movie entry in the exported file. Though it is possible, I wouldn't blame you for not supporting it - it's not a perfectly clean and light-weight solution to implement.

While that's technically possible, I don't think I'll try to scrape their website as a means to get IDs. You're right, it's just not a great way to get data.

On that note, would it be possible to create a document containing a list of straight up TMDb IDs and import them into your TMDb account? I'm considering writing some sort of script myself that would scrape the IDs from their site on the user's end.

Also, unfortunately, it seems unlikely they are going to add TMDb IDs to their exports any time soon. The suggestion has already been made quite a while ago, but left unanswered by any staff member.

@jelle619 said:

On that note, would it be possible to create a document containing a list of straight up TMDb IDs and import them into your TMDb account? I'm considering writing some sort of script myself that would scrape the IDs from their site on the user's end.

Also, unfortunately, it seems unlikely they are going to add TMDb IDs to their exports any time soon. The suggestion has already been made quite a while ago, but left unanswered by any staff member.

Is there anything new about this?

@Suburbanno said:

Is there anything new about this?

Not that I am aware of, unfortunately. I recommend opening it up as a new topic, as this one is old and not-so-visible.

@jelle619 said:

I recommend opening it up as a new topic, as this one is old and not-so-visible.

If you're referring to here on TMDB, there's nothing we can do about this without LB adding support for either IMDb or TMDB ID's, so there's no need for a new discussion.

@travisbell said:

@jelle619 said:

I recommend opening it up as a new topic, as this one is old and not-so-visible.

If you're referring to here on TMDB, there's nothing we can do about this without LB adding support for either IMDb or TMDB ID's, so there's no need for a new discussion.

If I understand it correctly, this isn't actually about support for LB but being able to import a list of plain IMDb IDs.

If you want to create your own CSV that maps to one of the documented formats found here, then by all means go for it. thumbsup_tone2

Why not just use a script to grab the TMDB ids for all the films in your Letterboxd export? Would be done in about 5 mins, even with thousands of films. And then you can just use the CSV in the standard way importing here and the TMDB ids would instantly be matched.

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