The Movie Database Support
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Results from Discover/Movie do not relate to search terms
posted by WhitneyShakeSTAFFMOD on July 30, 2023 at 5:38 PM
Attempting to get familiar with Discover/Movie in the API and no matter what I enter I'm getting back the same list of new releases. I'm probably doing something wrong but the guide for Discover https://developer.themoviedb.org/documentation/api/discover doesn't exist any more so I'm struggling to figure out what that might be.
For example, if I enter, 'Paul Rudd' into with_cast and 'Adventure' into with_genres, I just get the same list of new releases. The only field that appears to work for me is release date, but it doesn't work in tandem with the other fields. It just gives me a list of movies that came out that year - I mean, unless Paul Rudd really was in every single movie in 1999...
Would appreciate any tips or resources. Thanks
Reply by robbie3999
on July 30, 2023 at 6:00 PM
Hi @WhitneyShake, here is the documentation for discover. You can also see all the other endpoints on the left hand side of the page.
Both with_cast and with_genres accept numbers, not text. Cast would be the tmdb_id of the person. Genre would be the genre_id number from this endpoint.
Reply by WhitneyShake
on July 30, 2023 at 8:16 PM
Thanks so much @robbie3999, that's very helpful. I switched to the id and we're back in business. I'm confused as to why it says 'string' next to 'with_cast'. Do you know if this labeling is a typo or maybe refers to something other than the input? I'm new to APIs in general and just want to make sure I understand. Appreciate your time.
Reply by robbie3999
on July 30, 2023 at 8:52 PM
Well, all of this doc was redone a few months ago. There are probably a few places that need more clarification. I'm just guessing, but the field may be labeled as a string because it has to be read in as a string because of the option to have multiple inputs separated by "," (and) or "|" (or). For example, 1|2|3 is a valid input and will search for 1 or 2 or 3.
Reply by WhitneyShake
on July 31, 2023 at 12:34 PM
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.