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https://github.com/mfisher911/movies-to-dayone

Look up movie details and store as Day One Journal entries
https://github.com/mfisher911/movies-to-dayone

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Look up movie details and store as Day One Journal entries

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# Movies to DayOne



Problem: from 2003 to 2014, I kept track of movies I watched in an

OrgMode file. By 2014, I wanted to do this with a more mobile-first

approach, so I started tracking them in the [Day

One](https://dayoneapp.com) journal (which ended up getting a template

managed by an iOS Workflow/Shortcut).



I captured the following attributes:



- Date Watched

- Title -- as shown by IMDb, for instance: 28 Days Later... (2002)

- Where -- viewing location (theater name or perhaps media, like

  "VHS")

- Score -- integer rating, 1-5

- New -- Boolean -- was this first time I saw it?



When I translated this to DayOne, I wanted to expand to match the

current Day One entry template, which is something like this:



    28 Days Later... (2002)   # title

    5/5                       # rating

    IMDb summary

    -- IMDb link



In Day One, I use tags for easier filtering: this entry would be

tagged "5/5" and "Movies". If it was a first viewing, it also would be

tagged "new".



## Data (cleaning) Requirements



I wanted to look up the IMDb summaries and URLs based on the titles. I

found a web service, the [OMDb API](http://www.omdbapi.com), that made

this substantially easier, although not perfect.



Day One can also store the geographic coordinates of the entry

location. Since I had theater names, I wanted to find them (where

possible: some theaters closed since I went).



I converted the Org Mode file to a CSV and walked through the data,

looking up the IMDb and location information as I went. I stored the

results in a SQLite database, with `movies_to_db.py`.



## Outcome



I had roughly 1,300 entries in the Org Mode file (not all were

unique), but the OMDb API limited free use to 1,000 queries a day, so

I did my lookups over a weekend.



If a movie has a non-English original name, I like to store that.

There were several instances where a title I stored (via copy/paste

from IMDb into the file) couldn't be found. I could generally find the

titles by doing other web searches and then find the IMDb pages.



There were also a handful of movies where the title search I did

through OMDb API yielded a documentary segment about the movie instead

of the actual movie, so I had to do some manual cleanup

(`clean_db.py`).



Finally, I loaded the historic entries into a new Day One journal,

using `db_to_dayone.py`. After that, I was frequently able to use the

Day One map tool to zoom to the specific theater locations and add

back in theater names, using Day One's affiliation with Foursquare.



## Regrets



I should have been more careful to write out HTTPS URLs in the journal

entries with `movies_to_db.py`. I must have looked at an old entry

instead of a current one when I was building the template, and I

didn't notice this until too late.