The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Should the site make an API request every time someone searches?
posted by Roygbiv1STAFFMOD on January 17, 2014 at 1:26 PM
I'm currently developing a site and there is a search engine that, when someone inputs, makes a request to themovie db API. I'm not very experienced but I'm trying to learn. So, if 100 people searched for the same movie, there would be 100 separate requests. I feel like this is bad for the internet economy. Is there a method to avoid that (maybe somehow download the database locally) or it is the only way to make requests again and again?
Reply by Travis Bell
on January 17, 2014 at 4:15 PM
Hi Roygbiv1,
You are free to cache and store data on your own server but with search especially, unless you're up for creating a powerful and robust search infrastructure like we have (many hundreds of dev hours) you might as well just send them back to TMDb.
It's not really "bad", search is one of those things that kind of needs to be real time.
We do not provide any type of downloadable database. Only the API.
Cheers.