The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Question about poster_path unqiueness
posted by wizengamotSTAFFMOD on March 10, 2014 at 11:10 PM
Just wondering how unique the poster_path value is between different records in the database. I am considering making the local cache just put all the files (using the poster path as the filename sans illegal characters) in a single directory. Since the largest cache I am expecting here will probably be a few thousand at most I probably should not be too worried. Essentially I am just wanting to make sure that poster x is not displayed for movie y and if two posters in the system get the same poster path (but different overall access URLS) then my local cache could fail and I am wondering if there are steps taken on the API side to ensure that the poster_path value is 100% unique for all posters in the system.
Thanks in advance.
Reply by Dale
on March 11, 2014 at 5:13 AM
I do not code for ThemovieDb. But in all the time I have used it which is some many years now the Poster_Path is different for every film. I have not hit a film with the same URL string yet (don't think i will.).
What I would recommend doing is writing a update script that checks the update page for any image that are up dates as it does happen and then clear the old image out or just keep the old one and update your meta data for the new unique URL string.
I am sure Travis confirm this for you.
Dale.
Reply by Travis Bell
on March 13, 2014 at 1:27 PM
Hi wizengamot,
We do validate file uniqueness per movie but there's two things to mention:
Because of these issues, you'll find that even when images are removed from an object, the image stays online. Having said all of this though, we make no guarantees each image file path is unique to the particular collection you're referencing, only the individual object.
Cheers.