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erunion / showtimes

[deprecated] a movie showtimes API
MIT License
52 stars 14 forks source link

Configurable API services #4

Open erunion opened 10 years ago

erunion commented 10 years ago

It would be awesome to not have to rely on scraping Google Movies and instead be able to configure what movie showtime service to utilize. I'm not sure if this would require having to install a plugin like showtimes-google-movies, or if you'd just pass in service: 'google-movies' into the options object.

If an API service, like Tribune Media Services required an API key, that could also just be passed into the options object I suppose.

jstart commented 9 years ago

Do you think it makes sense to put multiple API providers into one module like this? Or are you thinking of moving away from scraping completely? Seems like none of the APIs provide much access or reasonable quotas without becoming an approved partner (TMS, Fandango, etc.)

erunion commented 9 years ago

I started this project while I was experimenting with an idea for a new way to display movie showtimes. After about a week of trying to go through the hoops of signing up or TMS and the Fandango API, I got fed up and just started scraping Google Movies. TMS/Fandango are a massive barrier to entry if you're prototyping with theater data, so I think at the very least, having the option to scrape should be part of this library (whether it's part of something like showtimes-google-movies, I don't know).

That said, if someone wants to become an approved partner, I don't see any reason why they couldn't use this module to simplify their lives (granted there was a showtimes-fandango or showtimes-tms plugin).

jstart commented 9 years ago

Got it, was just curious about the idea behind this, thanks!