Introduction
In this study, an API call will be sent to the The Movie Database (TMDB) servers to retrieve a list of Italian Western Movies. The resulting table will include th first 20 movies with the highest number of user votes.
One can access to the API details by clicking here. The API provides a variety of features to get movies and TV Shows related data such as cast, synopsis, user votes, and country based statistics.
The steps taken during the preparation of this report can be summarized as follows:
Receiving an API Key by following the 4 steps addressed here.
Setting up an R Markdown file and preparing the environment by installing the related packages.
Performing test calls to check whether the environment is working.
Calling the base URL’s and extending them with additional queries to obtain more specific results.
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# Installing the required R packages
# install.packages("httr")
# install.packages("jsonlite")
# Library imports
library("httr")
library("jsonlite")
# Setting the API key
api_key <- "{Insert your API key here}"
# Defining a function to concatenate URL's and query strings easily
extend_URL <- function(URL, query_string){
result <- paste(URL, "&", query_string, sep ="")
return(result)
}
API Call for Genres
First, the list of official genre labels used in the website should be retrieved.
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# URL template for the "genre" call
genre <- "https://api.themoviedb.org/3/genre/movie/list?api_key=<<api_key>>"
# Setting the language
genre <- extend_URL(genre, "language=en-US")
# Inserting the API key to the template
genre <- gsub("<<api_key>>", api_key, genre)
# Performing the call
genre_call <- httr::GET(genre)
# Checking the status of the call
genre_call$status_code
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## [1] 200
The status code implies that the call was successful. The next step is finding out the genre ID of “western”.
API Call for Genres - Results
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# Converting the call results to an easily readable list
genre_char <- base::rawToChar(genre_call$content)
genre_json <- jsonlite::fromJSON(genre_char, flatten = TRUE)
knitr::kable(genre_json$genres)
| id | name |
|---|---|
| 28 | Action |
| 12 | Adventure |
| 16 | Animation |
| 35 | Comedy |
| 80 | Crime |
| 99 | Documentary |
| 18 | Drama |
| 10751 | Family |
| 14 | Fantasy |
| 36 | History |
| 27 | Horror |
| 10402 | Music |
| 9648 | Mystery |
| 10749 | Romance |
| 878 | Science Fiction |
| 10770 | TV Movie |
| 53 | Thriller |
| 10752 | War |
| 37 | Western |
API Call for Movie Discovery
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# URL template for the "discover" call
discover <- "https://api.themoviedb.org/3/discover/movie?api_key=<<api_key>>"
# Setting the language
discover <- extend_URL(discover, "language=en-US")
# Retrieve the movies with highest number of votes
discover <- extend_URL(discover, "sort_by=vote_count.desc")
# Filtering by genre (Western's genre id is 37)
discover <- extend_URL(discover, "with_genres=37")
# Filtering by original language (Italian)
discover <- extend_URL(discover, "with_original_language=it")
# Inserting the API key to the template
discover <- gsub("<<api_key>>", api_key, discover)
# Performing the call
discover_call <- httr::GET(discover)
# Checking the status of the call
discover_call$status_code
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## [1] 200
The call was successful.
API Call for Movie Discovery - Results
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# Converting the call results to an easily readable list
discover_char <- base::rawToChar(discover_call$content)
discover_json <- jsonlite::fromJSON(discover_char, flatten = TRUE)
results <- discover_json$results
# Checking the retrieved field names
colnames(results)
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## [1] "adult" "backdrop_path" "genre_ids"
## [4] "id" "original_language" "original_title"
## [7] "overview" "popularity" "poster_path"
## [10] "release_date" "title" "video"
## [13] "vote_average" "vote_count"
Final Results
Finally, a clean summary table consisting of basic movie information can be generated as follows:
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table <- results[c("title", "release_date", "vote_average", "vote_count")]
knitr::kable(table)
| title | release_date | vote_average | vote_count |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | 1966-12-23 | 8.5 | 7156 |
| Once Upon a Time in the West | 1968-12-21 | 8.3 | 3646 |
| A Fistful of Dollars | 1964-01-18 | 7.9 | 3540 |
| For a Few Dollars More | 1965-12-18 | 8.0 | 3333 |
| They Call Me Trinity | 1970-12-22 | 7.6 | 1110 |
| Duck, You Sucker | 1971-10-20 | 7.7 | 877 |
| My Name Is Nobody | 1973-12-13 | 7.3 | 792 |
| Trinity Is Still My Name | 1971-10-21 | 7.4 | 762 |
| Django | 1966-04-06 | 7.2 | 739 |
| The Great Silence | 1968-02-21 | 7.5 | 311 |
| God Forgives… I Don’t! | 1967-10-31 | 6.6 | 211 |
| Troublemakers | 1994-11-25 | 6.1 | 189 |
| Ace High | 1968-10-02 | 6.5 | 166 |
| Death Rides a Horse | 1967-08-31 | 7.0 | 155 |
| A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot | 1975-12-16 | 6.4 | 133 |
| The Big Gundown | 1966-11-29 | 7.3 | 132 |
| Boot Hill | 1969-12-20 | 6.0 | 132 |
| Zorro | 1975-03-06 | 6.4 | 117 |
| Day of Anger | 1967-12-19 | 7.0 | 115 |
| Keoma | 1976-11-25 | 6.9 | 115 |
Looks like my favourite one takes the sixth place :-)
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