Adding new features to the API

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

Genres are the one obvious piece of information that's been "missing" on TVmaze from the start. I've been hesitant to add these, because they are so arbitrary: who decides which genres a show belongs to? I decided to sit it out and wait for people to ask for it, and you're actually the first to bring it up. If more people are interested in genre information, we'll definitely find a way and add this.

Air time: alright, this will be easy to add. Let me just think for a bit about what format to use.

Rating: i'll have to think about this one for a little bit longer. We could easily expose the rating information in the API, though internally we use a "weight" to sort shows & people, which is based on a combination of votes, follow counts and page views. This is more representative than votes (because far from everybody votes), so perhaps we should use this value in the API too.

Combined show info and episode list: Check out http://api.tvmaze.com/shows/1?embed=episodes, this should be exactly what you want :)

PS: What happened when your initial post failed? Was it an error on your end or did we misbehave?

Thanks for your reply.

The easiest way to add the genres would be to get them from tvrage for the moment, as i don't know many other sites which include them. But i think they are very useful, they don't even have to be 100% accurate, in my case, they are required while searching for example new and upcoming shows. Example where i use it: http://oi58.tinypic.com/14vk4r7.jpg - That would also be an idea for this website, the feature to search for new and upcoming tv shows filtered by genre for example, this one is missing on almost every tv show site and would be in my opinion a great plus for this site. I currently use tvrage to filter for new shows and then save the html for my program as seen in the pic.

As for the Air Time, the best format would be like this: 2015-04-22T22:00:00-04:00

Rating/"Popularity": That sounds even better than the normal rating which is currently visible on the website! Looking forward to it. This is where i would use it: http://oi61.tinypic.com/2zxxklc.jpg

Ps. I just see that "Runtime" is also missing in the "Show Info" API :)

And about the post which failed: I am not sure what happend, dunno if it was caused by the website or on my end. I left the post new thread page open for a while before actually writing, maybe that was the reason?

Edit: I just had another idea :) One more thing that would probably speed up my program a little when someone has over 50 tv shows in his list like me :P

In the "Show Info" API, the next & last episode thing could have a few more details, instead of just the link, you could include things like this:

"previousepisode": {

"href": "http://api.tvmaze.com/episodes/11392"

"Season": 1

"Episode": 12

"Episode Name": Pilot
"Air Date": 2013-01-30

Again, just an idea, no must have.

Oh, I think I might have misunderstood you on the airtime part. I thought you ment the scheduled ("usually airs at") property that contains something like "Mondays at 20:00" or "Monday-Friday at 23:30". If you're looking for the airdate of the upcoming episode, you can get that from a call like http://api.tvmaze.com/shows/66?embed=nextepisode in exactly the format you describe :) I think that answers the question in your edit as well!

Runtime is already available in the API for episodes, I'll soon add it to shows as well.

Ok great :)

Why don't you add those embed commands to the api page?

I have finished converting most things to your current api now, only waiting for ratings/popularity now :)

The API documentation was updated to document the embed behavior, and the "weight" and "runtime" properties are now available for shows.

great, thanks :)

So i checked the "weight" in the api. I have to say it is a little confusing. I would rather also have the user rating included.I mean how can i tell if the show is popular or no by the weight? The Big Bang Theory has a weight of 100, whereas Breaking Bad has a weight of 19. I understand that it is related to the current popularity of a show and it is great but still the actual show rating is missing here :)

So if you could think about about also adding the user "rating" to the api, it would be great!

One more thing maybe, the weight thing is great, i could think about adding a feature like "popular shows" to my program. Do you plan on adding a feature to the api to return a show list with for example 20 currently popular shows or something like that?

Well, that's true. The weight favors current shows, as recent pageviews are factored into the calculation.

I suppose we can add the regular rating to the API as well, let me think about it for a little bit. The same goes for popular shows!

Added rating.average, which is either a float; or NULL if there haven't been any votes on that show yet.

HI :)

Is there any way get the show info+all episodes+specials with one request, i tried this but it doesn't work: http://api.tvmaze.com/shows/82?embed=episodes&spec...

I see what you did there :-), but this isn't currently possible, sorry!

Yes i know :) But i hope that you can add it, because specials also belong to the tv show and it is sucks to download everything seperately :)

Maybe something like this could be added: http://api.tvmaze.com/shows/82?embed=ALLepisodes

- Displaying the genre of a show in the "Show Info" API. -> Great when searching for new shows by simply checking what shows air today.

This is now done!