Movie Ratings - IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic

[mattsson]

A workflow for Alfred 2 which lets you search for movies and see IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores for it.

 

The workflow is based on the "Better IMDB Search" workflow by frankspin. It uses the OMDb API.

 

Movie Ratings uses a single command:

 

mr [query]: Looks up a movie matching the query.

 

Using the copy shortcut will copy the movie's IMDb URL and clicking Enter will open the movie's IMDb page.

 

 

Download latest release | Source

 

v0.1

 

- Initial release.

 

v0.2

 

- Workflow now asks user to input at least 2 search characters instead of showing "No results found".

 

v1.0.1

 

- Fixes results not appearing because of change in the OMDB API

Edited January 25, 2017 by mattsson

[vitor]

I’ll preface this by saying this workflow shows potential. I’ve however identified some rough areas, especially in regard to results quality.

I’ve used pretty much all publicly available Alfred workflows for checking movie ratings, and even built one myself. Movie and TV Show Search (lets call it MTSS, for short) is the one I currently use, but I liked from your preview how you show the ratings right on the results. Though MTSS shows more information, the rating is usually all I want, and I’m always up to see how other workflows work, so I decided to give it a go.

First, I searched for Hausu.

OK, granted, that might be an unusual choice, so lets try Schindler’s list.

Now lets try those with MTSS.

In both cases, Movie Ratings showed way more results, but all of them incredibly irrelevant, and never the correct one. MTSS, on the other hand, was right on point. You’re using the same API (OMDb), so this disparity in results is surprising.

I’ve since tried with other movies, and MR worked fine. However, it’s also very slow in the sense that it shows old results from my typing, and those linger on for a while. So if I search for, say, “A Clockwork Orange”, I finish typing and I still see No movie was found.. That would be fine, except that then I see a list of irrelevant results first, and after a few seconds the final (and correct) list shows up. That first list shouldn’t have appeared. Again, this is an area where MTSS works quite well.

By no means do I mean to imply MTSS is objectively better. I’m using it as the comparison because it is indeed the best I’ve used (even made me deprecate my own) so it is the metric I’ll naturally judge against. I merely mean to point to areas that are related to the overall experience where I feel MR could be improved, and why. Hope you were able to find some value in it.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Vítor

[mattsson]

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I do myself use MTSS as well, but, as you said, I wanted a workflow which shows the ratings right away. I'll talk a look at the quality of the results and I should add some throttling to the search, so it doesn't start searching while you're typing and so you won't get "No movies found" until you're actually done typing in the title.

[mattsson]

I took a closer look at MTSS, and it doesn't use OMDB for the initial search results, it uses TMDB. I will take a look at replacing OMDB with TMDB.

[tone]

I took a closer look at MTSS, and it doesn't use OMDB for the initial search results, it uses TMDB. I will take a look at replacing OMDB with TMDB.

 

Bingo. TMDb API gives fairly good search results. I, too, like how your workflow shows results right on the search screen. Hopefully you can implement the TMDb searching without too much of a hit on speed.

[vitor]

I, too, like how your workflow shows results right on the search screen.

I was going to add that as feature request to your workflow, but then it dawned on me that may actually make it slower to show results, and the reason it feels so fast right now might be precisely because results aren’t shown immediately.

[thomazrb]

Hi, when i try to find a movie i always receive the message "Nothing was found"

 

can you check the debug?

 

Starting debug for 'Movie Ratings'

 

[sTDERR: alfred.workflow.input.scriptfilter] 18:44:15 workflow.py:2320 WARNING  Can't save last version: workflow has no version

18:44:15 workflow.py:2176 DEBUG    Workflow finished in 0.002 seconds.

[sTDERR: alfred.workflow.input.scriptfilter] 18:44:16 workflow.py:2320 WARNING  Can't save last version: workflow has no version

18:44:16 workflow.py:2176 DEBUG    Workflow finished in 0.083 seconds.

[sTDERR: alfred.workflow.input.scriptfilter] 18:44:16 workflow.py:2320 WARNING  Can't save last version: workflow has no version

18:44:16 workflow.py:2176 DEBUG    Workflow finished in 0.065 seconds.

[sTDERR: alfred.workflow.input.scriptfilter] 18:44:16 workflow.py:2320 WARNING  Can't save last version: workflow has no version

18:44:16 workflow.py:2176 DEBUG    Workflow finished in 0.075 seconds.

 

Every time i try to put a letter, for example in this case i tried "mr kill"

 

Thank you.

[justcharlie]

Hi, when i try to find a movie i always receive the message "Nothing was found"

 

I get the same thing: "Nothing was found" no matter what I search for.

[giovanni]

It seems there is no workflow to show movie ratings in alfred (3) that is currently working? 

I tried Movie Ratings and RottenMovies...

Thanks!

G.

 

[tone]

It seems there is no workflow to show movie ratings in alfred (3) that is currently working? 

I tried Movie Ratings and RottenMovies...

Thanks!

G.

 

The workflow I developed seems to work still (tbh I don't use it all that much).

[mattsson]

I just fixed the workflow so it works again. You can use the "Download latest release" link in the first post.