IMDb Scraper API

A Node.js application to scrape movie data from IMDb and serve it through a REST API.

Features

• Scrape movies by genre from IMDb interest pages
• Scrape IMDb Top 250 movies list
• Scrape popular movies and TV shows
• REST API with caching to reduce latency
• Easy access to multiple IMDb lists

Installation

1. Clone this repository
2. Install dependencies:

npm install

Usage

Start the API Server

npm start

Or for development with auto-reload:

npm run dev

The server will start on port 3000 by default (or the port specified in the PORT environment variable).

API Endpoints

• GET / - Welcome page with API information
• GET /api/genres - List all available genres
• GET /api/genre/:genreName - Get movies and shows for a specific genre
• GET /api/top-lists - List all available top lists
• GET /api/top/:listName - Get movies/shows from a specific top list

Run Individual Scrapers

To run the genre scraper directly:

npm run start:genre

To run the top movies/shows scraper directly:

npm run start:top

Data Format

Genre Response

{
  "genre": "Comedy",
  "data": {
    "popular_movies": [
      {
        "imdbId": "tt1234567",
        "title": "Movie Title",
        "rating": "8.5",
        "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/..."
      }
    ],
    "top_rated_movies": [...],
    "popular_tv_shows": [...],
    "top_rated_tv_shows": [...]
  }
}

Top List Response

{
  "list": "Top Popular Movies",
  "data": [
    {
      "rank": 1,
      "imdbId": "tt1234567",
      "title": "Movie Title",
      "year": "2023",
      "rating": "8.5",
      "image": "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/..."
    }
  ]
}

Caching

The API uses in-memory caching to reduce latency and minimize requests to IMDb. Cache entries expire after 1 hour.

Dependencies

• express - Web server framework
• axios - For making HTTP requests
• cheerio - For parsing HTML and extracting data
• node-cache - For in-memory caching
• cors - For enabling CORS