The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Fetch other user's favorite lists
posted by qwrtzpSTAFFMOD on February 14, 2014 at 1:56 PM
Can I access other people's account using /3/account/{id}/favorite_movies? I just want to get favorite lists from a lot of users to create improved recommendations (not based on similarity of content but watchers).
Reply by Travis Bell
on February 15, 2014 at 9:59 AM
Hmmm, the way the API restricts account access right now, no. But since the permission of that page is editable by the user, if a user has decided to share their favourites page, it could be possible to retrieve it via the API.
The only thing I'm left wondering about is how would you discover these account? On the website, you can get around by clicking people names on many pages (edits, list creators, image uploads, leaderboard, etc...) where most of that doesn't exist on the API.
Reply by qwrtzp
on February 15, 2014 at 11:21 AM
Yeah, that would have been my next question.
So at the moment getting getting favorite lists from all or any amount of users is not possible since I can't just get all users?
Reply by Travis Bell
on February 17, 2014 at 10:38 AM
And I still don't have a great answer or solution.
It is not possible. Everything is authenticated with the combination API key and session key that is unique per every authorization a user allows.