IMDb Connector stopped working

Hi @tkonsoulas, thanks for taking the time to submit this issue.

Unfortunately, I can’t give you any solution right away. You’d have to explain “stopped working” in a more detailed version. Where did it stop? How did it stop? Have you updated or installed any new plugins or themes recently?

That will narrow down where the bug comes from.

Hi!

We have encountered the same problem in our website. None of the php functions to search for a movie work, unless the movie is already stored in the cache. Specifically, imdb_connector_has_movie() and imdb_connector_get_movie() both return false whatever the title o imdb_id passed as parameter (unless the movie is already in cache). We haven’t updated the plugin, or the wordpress version or any other thing.

We’ve tried a direct query to the omdbapi (as suggested in other threads here), such as https://www.omdbapi.com/?i=tt0451279, but they always fail with the same result: Response “False”, Error: “No API key provided”.

After googling for a bit, we’ve found that apparently omdbapi is going private, or something like that. There’s an alert on their homepage. This change seems very recent, as of the last week or so, which is when we started getting errors.

Is our reasoning correct? We assume that if we want to continue using the plugin we should get an api key from OMDb, and append it to the $api_url in the plugin’s php code, following their new format (https://www.omdbapi.com/?apikey=%5Byourkey%5D&). Does this make sense?

Thanks in advance!

Hi @albarc,

You’ve probably figured out the reason by yourself. I haven’t yet checked on omdbapi.com’s updates but it makes sense.

Right now, I’m working on a private plugin that uses IMDb Connector, so I’ll have to face this issue within the next few days myself. Once I’ve found a convenient solution for that, I’ll implement it in the plugin and release an update. Please be patient and thanks again for your accurate description, that helps me a lot.

Ok, thanks, we’ll wait then!

I’m probably having the same issue. Non cached movie posters are rendering with an empty src.

Interestingly another plugin I use that utilizes omdbapi.com is also showing up as broken, in that case it is showing up with: Error: No API key provided. Perhaps something is going on the IMDB side?

OMDb API is private now and no more free data request.

If you want to get the movie details via OMDB, you need a valid API key which can get after making a donation or become a patron.

Please visit their site for more detailed info ??

Does imdb-connector use OMDb?

@egf: Yes.

Ahh that explains the issues then.

I’m going to update the plugin to let everyone who uses it know the reason why IMDb Connector doesn’t work anymore and how they can fix it (which costs money). In the meanwhile, I’ll try to find an alternative solution so that IMDb Connector remains free. Do you have any ideas on how to achieve that?

Maybe myapifilms will do the job still free.

Also the TMDb API is free as far as I know (here). You should consider changing the plugin name in that case, tho, haha. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately, omdb.com is by far the best API with the most movies. I’ve tried some others in the past but always found them to be insufficient. But I’ll have a look and see if they’ve improved over the years, thanks!

Hi everybody,

I’ve just released version 1.5.1 which is basically a hotfix. The API should work again. Some minor fixes were also done.

Please report any bugs or errors with the new version as quickly as you can.

Many thanks!

Hi,

We’ve tried the new version and it works perfectly as far as we’ve seen. Thank you so much for your help!