The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Complex query strings
posted by nzsjbSTAFFMOD on December 9, 2013 at 3:14 PM
Is there any documentation on the special search terms in queries such as .lte, .gte and the effect of characters and strings such as - and 'or'.
I've had some problems recently where having hypen in the wrong place in a query string produced 38,000+ results when it should have been zero.
Reply by Travis Bell
on December 9, 2013 at 5:05 PM
Hi nzsjb,
The only methods that support such queries are all documented in our documentation. If it's not documented, there is no support.
Reply by nzsjb
on December 9, 2013 at 5:28 PM
Thanks for the rapid response Travis.
I think my question was phrased badly.
I'm issuing a Search. If the CGI escaped string contains certain words that could be construed as conditionals like 'or' or if a hyphen precedes part of the query string with no space after it seems to be processed as a complex query.
If I enclose the whole query text in quotes it seems to process it literally.
I was wondering if there was any documentation on how the Search string is used by TMDB.
Reply by Travis Bell
on December 9, 2013 at 5:34 PM
There is no deliberate support for 'and' or 'or' but that's not to say between some of the layers of abstraction you weren't tripping on something to this effect.
Do do you happen to have an example? I'm not sure if this would be something we try to support or not, I'll need to investigate it with some working examples and decided what's best.
Thanks!
Reply by nzsjb
on December 9, 2013 at 6:23 PM
Here's an example (note there is no space between the hyphen and the word Australia's). This string returns 37,000+ results
The Ashes-Perth -Australia's Best
Add a space between the hyphen and the word Australia's and you get zero results.