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TMDB Data

Introduction

The primary source for information about movies, persons etc. is TMDB. Make sure you have set a valid TMDB api key, e.g. via environment variable (TMDB_API_KEY) or in the admin server settings UI.

Tip

Execute the metadata sync and image cache commands regularly, e.g. via cronjobs, to keep your application data up to date.

Movie & Person data

Description

Update local movie or person information with the latest data from TMDB.

Commands

php bin/console.php tmdb:movie:sync
php bin/console.php tmdb:person:sync

Administrators can enqueue either synchronization from Settings > Server > Job Queue by selecting Create Job. Recurring synchronizations are configured under Settings > Server > Job Schedules using a standard five-field cron expression evaluated in UTC. For example, 0 * * * * runs hourly and 0 3 * * 1 runs every Monday at 03:00 UTC. Recurring schedules can be enabled, disabled, or deleted from that page.

Missed schedule occurrences do not create catch-up jobs. An occurrence is skipped when the same TMDB synchronization type is already waiting or in progress. Every-minute schedules should be used carefully because they can create sustained TMDB API load.

The done status means the queue job completed. Individual records that TMDB could not update are logged as warnings and do not cause the whole job to fail.

Important flags

  • --help Detailed information about the command
  • --hours Only update movies/persons which were last synced X hours or longer ago
  • --never-synced Only update movies/persons which have never been synced before
  • --threshold Maximum number of movies/person to sync for this run

Example

Update information for the first 50 movies which were updated at least 48 hours ago. 

php bin/console.php tmdb:movie:sync` --hours 48 --threshold 50

Image Cache

Description

Enable by setting environment variable TMDB_ENABLE_IMAGE_CACHING to 1.

To prevent rate limit issues with the TMDB api you should cache TMDB images. This will store a local copy of the images in the storage directory and use this image instead of the original one from TMDB. Make sure you persist the content of the storage directory to keep data e.g. when restarting docker container.

Commands

php bin/console.php tmdb:imageCache:refresh
php bin/console.php tmdb:imageCache:delete

Administrators can cache images for selected local movie and person IDs under Settings > Server > Job Queue. Movie jobs also cache cast and crew images. The same targeted refresh can be scheduled under Settings > Server > Job Schedules.

Import personal User Ratings

There is no native integration to import the personal movie ratings of a tmdb user at the moment. However, you can use third party tools like TMDBToMovary to work around this limitation.