The Movie Database Support
Support → API Support
Discover Request Sorting (Upcoming Releases)
posted by mdavis1982STAFFMOD on October 20, 2023 at 9:12 AM
Hi...
I'm trying to build a discover request to show me what movies are releasing in the next week in the UK.
Here's the request URL:
https://api.themoviedb.org/3/discover/movie?include_adult=false&include_video=false&language=en®ion=gb&sort_by=primary_release_date.asc&with_release_type=2|3&release_date.gte=2023-10-20&release_date.lte=2023-10-27
This is giving unexpected results that are not (seemingly) in order. The first 3 movies are from 1960 - 1993.
This can also be observed on the website: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/upcoming
Set the filters to:
- Sort: Release Date Ascending
- Country: United Kingdom
- Theatrical checked
- From: 20/10/23
- To: 27/10/23
You will see that the results are not in order, and include releases from 1960.
I may just be misinterpreting the results, but any help would be greatly appreciated!
Reply by robbie3999
on October 20, 2023 at 8:11 PM
Hi @mdavis1982, when you use "release_date" for the date range, you get -all- release dates that fit the date range and the other qualifiers. For the first movie returned, "Peeping Tom (1960)", see the releases here, there is a UK theatrical release for 10/27/2023 (4k Re-release) that is matching your search. I'm sure the others that don't make sense have a similar situation.
You might want to try changing the "release_date" range to a "primary_release_date" range, this will only match the primary release dates so you won't get these type of matches.
Reply by mdavis1982
on October 23, 2023 at 4:26 AM
Hi @robbie3999
Thanks for the info. Switching to sorting by "primary_release_date" has helped a little, but I'm still getting the data in a confusing order.
For example, in the results, I get:
This ordering doesn't seem to make sense to me, but that's the order that they're coming back with from the API.
Any more help would be greatly appreciated!
Reply by robbie3999
on October 23, 2023 at 5:58 PM
Well, changing release_date to primary_release_date is kind of a bandaid. What you are getting now is a mix of release date and primary release date information.
This is what a primary release date is. Note that this can be any country, it's just the first one that matches the criteria.
So your search is finding a primary release date in the date range, but the filters "region" and "with_release_type" apply to release date only, not primary release date. So when these match you are getting that also. What gets returned in the results is the release date match first, and then the primary release date match. But you are sorting by primary release date. So thats why the dates don't sort, because they are release dates.
Take Beyond Utopia, the primary release date is US 10/23/2023. But the UK release date match is 10/27/2023 (because you specified region=gb and with_release_type=2|3).
Take The Holdovers, the primary release date is US 10/27/2023. But the UK release date match is 01/19/2024.
I think all this is correct, but perhaps someone else may come along with more information. So you can play around with different ways to do what you are trying to do. But I'm not sure anything is going to be perfect.