INFORMATION IN XML FORMAT ========================= Since version 4.0, IMDbPY can output information of Movie, Person, Character and Company instances in XML format. It's possible to get a single information (a key) in XML format, using the getAsXML(key) method (it will return None if the key is not found). E.g.: from imdb import IMDb ia = IMDb('http') movie = ia.get_movie(theMovieID) print movie.getAsXML('keywords') It's also possible to get a representation of a whole object, using the asXML() method: print movie.asXML() The returned strings are unicode. The _with_add_keys argument of the asXML() method can be set to False (default: True) to exclude the dynamically generated keys (like 'smart canonical title' and so on). XML FORMAT ========== Keywords are converted to tags, items in lists are enclosed in a 'item' tag. E.g.: <keywords> <item>a keyword</item> <item>another keyword</item> </keywords> Except when keys are known to be not fixed (e.g.: a list of keywords), in which case this schema is used: <item key="EscapedKeyword"> ... </item> In general, the 'key' attribute is present whenever the used tag doesn't match the key name. Movie, Person, Character and Company instances are converted like that (portions enclosed in squares are optionals): <movie id="movieID" access-system="accessSystem"> <title>A Long IMDb Movie Title (YEAR)</title> [<current-role> <person id="personID" access-system="accessSystem"> <name>Name Surname</name> [<notes>A Note About The Person</notes>] </person> </current-role>] [<notes>A Note About The Movie</notes>] </movie> Every 'id' can be empty. Actually the returned XML is mostly not pretty-printed. REFERENCES ========== Some text keys can contain references to other movies, persons and characters. The user can provide the defaultModFunct function (see the "MOVIE TITLES AND PERSON/CHARACTER NAMES REFERENCES" section of the README.package file), to replace these references with their own strings (e.g.: a link to a web page); it's up to the user, to be sure that the output of the defaultModFunct function is valid XML. DTD === Since version 4.1 a DTD is available; it can be found in this directory or on the web, at: http://imdbpy.sf.net/dtd/imdbpy41.dtd The version number changes with the IMDbPY version. LOCALIZATION ============ Since version 4.1 it's possible to translate the XML tags; see README.locale. FROM XML TO OBJECTS =================== Since version 4.6, you can dump the generated XML in a string or in a file, using it - later - to rebuild the original object. In the imdb.helpers module there's the parseXML() function which takes a string as input and return - if possible - an instance of the Movie, Person, Character or Company classes.