Ratings: Import history and data from other sites

There is currently no feature for importing lists into IMDB, even if they are ones exported from there so they should be formatted properly and everything would join up nicely. This would be useful if people exported their films as a back-up, because some people will accidentally delete their lists and want to put them back (someone has reported it on here already). This shouldn't be too difficult to do, as you can already do things, like copy someone's list into your own.

The problem with importing a list from another site is that without the IMDB film ID (it is in the link) you can't make everything match up completely. This could be rectified through importing by having a page where it offered you the ability to pick the right film. As you can imagine this'd need them to put in quite a bit of time and effort coding it.

There are a couple of options:

* Amazon/IMDB/LoveFilm set this feature up to allow exporting of lists between sites, which would need the ability to link the films together (as I don't think you get, for example, the ASINs on IMDB needed to link the entry there to the specific product on Amazon). This would be a powerful feature as it'd help boost the number of lists on all sites and would probably only need to be coded once (and either tweaked to work on all sites or hosted centrally on one of the sites). This system would then allow importing lists from other sites, which would also be a big boost to the Amazon family of sites.

* If IMDB just allowed you to import IMDB generated lists it'd be easy enough for some web savvy sort to produce a web-based system where you could import a list from anywhere and format it so it can be uploaded to IMDB (there is enough of an API to allow this kind of search from an external site).

It seems there is enough interest out there to create a system to allow the importing of IMDB-formatted lists and see how it goes from there. Fingers crossed this gets addressed at some point.

There are many desktop programs and websites where you can create a movie list, and my oldest personal list is a spreadsheet file. Adding every single movie title from those lists into my IMDB list is not very appealing to me as the lists have become huge over the years. Importing a list of titles(*) in some plain-text format would be very nice to have. At least the IMDB could support import for their own csv exports, that way there is means to bulk-import titles.
(* as there is no officially available imdb-id + title + akas source there are not many programs or websites providing lists that can be exported including imdb-id's values)

So +1 to this feature.

I agree with Emperor on the problem matching movies without imdb-id, It is more difficult to match all movies only on title + year (besides the alternative titles). But if one can import a list and given "suggestions" for the different titles instead of a perfect match. That would already be very time-saving.

Yeah you'd need two approaches:

* Import IMDB formatted lists - this would be easy to implement and would not only allow people to import lists they've exported from IMDB (some people export theirs and fiddle with them in spreadsheet software), but if someone had a list of IMDB films then it'd be easy for someone else to produce a little web widget that'd process this list into an IMDB-formatted lists that could be imported.

* Import other movie lists - as explained above this'd be trickier but not a big chore, just a few forms and a title search: the page could work through each list element and presented a radio buttoned list of possible films based on the title/year search (with links so someone can check them in a new window) so someone can select the right one and move on to the next film. It'd be quicker and easier than working through each film entry and searching for each one, then grabbing the link and using that to add the film to a list.

The first approach would be a good start, and you'd then have some of the underlying structure needed to make the second one work.

Actually, to load a movie in Listal you need its Amazon url, and to load a movie in iCheckMovies you need its IMDb ID. So, I think the sites have all the same data, they're not independent. It's only up to IMDb to open up its API and implement this feature (as the iCheckMovies team said... actually I have no idea what an API is).

PS: Sorry for the long time to answer it, I only received an e-mail remembering me about this today.

Actually, to load a movie in Listal you need its Amazon url, and to load a movie in iCheckMovies you need its IMDb ID.

That is good to know, it'd make a solution easier to implement - if the lists have the IMDB ID, and we had a way to import lists you'd exported from IMDB, then it is just a matter of formatting the list. ASINs might be trickier - I'd need to check, but usually what they do is do a Movie & TV search using the title, but it might be they have the ASINs stored and we don't see it. The staff should be able to clear that one up.

actually I have no idea what an API is

It is just a standardised way to request and receive data. IMDB do have one bu,t as far as I'm aware, it isn't comprehensive enough for people who want full flexibility.

I see... thanks for the help here Emperor!
Well, then it only depends on the IMDB staff to implement it?

Come on IMDb, please do this?

Good day!

Can you tell, please, is there any opportunity to import on IMDB my ratings for movies from other websites with similar rating system?

Thank you in advance for your answer,
best regards,
Ivan.

it's the only "standard" feature that is really missing, I have over 2500 movie titles in a standard txt file, csv file or xml, i'd love to be able to import these into a "my movies" list on imdb... This can't be that much work to implement, the only problem i foresee is that if everybody does that, it will be a strain on their servers as suddenly the info from 2500 movies needs to be 'scraped' and put into your lists... On the other hand, plenty of external programs are scraping the imdb for metadata already! I even think that people would stop scraping with other programs and use the imdb app instead of 3rd party software and therefor releasing strain on their servers.... pro's... con's..... what to do, what to do....

As far as I know, this is currently not planned, mostly due to prioritization/resurce allocation (in simpler words: there are other issues or project that are of a higher priority at this time).

This may change in the future, but for the time being we are not looking at adding an 'import' feature for lists, sorry.

If someone had a list of all their films with the imdb reference, would it be possible to use some VBA in Excel (or whatever) to simply skip through that list of hyperlinks together with a rating in order to (assuming you've logged in) and hit the appropriate target (say the bit that accepted
a title="Click to rate: 7" rel="nofollow" span 7 /span /a (carets removed)
ie create a list formatted something like:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100263/u...
that sort of thing?

I'd like to see this option. Lovefilm, IMDB are both Amazon companies so can't be too much of a stretch. It would great to have all the ratings/watched lists on these 3 sites merged. I could then export this to trakt.

I think we should also have ability to import movie list from excel spread sheet. 

Would love for this to happen! Seems like such an easy thing for them to do, too. I have a .csv file that Icheckmovies exported for me.