IMDbPY

Hi,

> I've tried playing with the query parameters, but without luck;
> does anyone knows a way to search for such a generic surname
> and get a _short_ list with the best X (lets say that X is 20 or
> another configurable parameter) matches?
After a few test I figured out, that
   http://akas.imdb.com/find?q=pong&nm=on&mx=20
gives 34 results.

I'm not sure if there could be a algorithm that could predict
such search phrases. Because if you try 'long', you will exceed
the limit of 500. And you only have

But, I guess, if you have enough bandwidth, you can write a small
script, that will brute force all combinations of 4 letters and
will test the response from the search engine for the amount of
results.
You only have to try 26^4 = 456976 times ;-)

And by the way, each day the imdb is increasing ... so there
will be a jitter in the search results.

Greetings
  Martin

On Aug 29, Martin Kirst <martin.kirst@...> wrote:

> After a few test I figured out, that
>    http://akas.imdb.com/find?q=pong&nm=on&mx=20
> gives 34 results.

Cool.  I did not try with other surmanes.
Now I understand what it means with "more than 500 partial matches":
in the database there are more than 500 names _containing_ the
"band" string somewhere in the name, but there are fewer names with
"pong" in it (more than 700 "%band%" and about 200 "%pong%" in my
local database)

> And by the way, each day the imdb is increasing ... so there
> will be a jitter in the search results.

True.
Ok, plan B: I'll play with the connection and see if I can close
it after a given amount of downloaded KB (a mobile can't download
300 KB just to get the first 20 results).


Thank you!
-- 
Davide Alberani <alberanid@...> [PGP KeyID: 0x465BFD47]
http://erlug.linux.it/~da/

On Aug 30, Davide Alberani <alberanid@...> wrote:

> Ok, plan B: I'll play with the connection and see if I can close
> it after a given amount of downloaded KB (a mobile can't download
> 300 KB just to get the first 20 results).

In the CVS there is a first attempt.
I can't even call this hack "untested", so maybe it won't work
at all. :-)

I still have to check if it _really_ download only a portion
of the web page.

-- 
Davide Alberani <alberanid@...> [PGP KeyID: 0x465BFD47]
http://erlug.linux.it/~da/