The Movie Database qoldaýy
Qoldaý → API qoldaýy
API key and opensource applications
posted by NaPsSTAFFMOD on 2013 Aqpan 19 at 5:59 PM
Hello,
I'm developping an opensource movie collection management software and I've chosen TMDB as default data source. For now, the API key has to be entered by the user in the application configuration file. I asked a few friends to test the application and they all groused about the need to sign-up on TMDB and to give information such as postal address or phone number to get the API key. I want my users to be happy, so I'm looking for an other solution.
My question is: do you have another solution for this problem?
If not, I'm thinking about implementing a kind of proxy between your API and the app. The proxy would be hosted by me and will export an HTTP api similar to yours (but not identical, because I can adapt it to the requests of my app, and it doesn't need to cover 100% of your API), with a little cache layer to avoid flooding your API. What do you think about this?
Thanks, Antoine.
Travis Bell jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 19 kúni 6:47 PM ýaqytynda
No. Not at this time.
That is going to be potentially problematic for you as we do API rate limiting based on IP address. With 1 server doing all of the requests to our API, it wouldn't take long before you starting hitting the rate limits.
Your best bet is definitely create a full cached layer between us and you only make external calls as you are filling in data. Once you have enough of the dataset cached the number of requests you make will get lower and lower.
Cheers.
NaPs jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 20 kúni 3:07 PM ýaqytynda
Thanks for your answer. Putting aside the technical problems, you are not opposed to the idea?
Travis Bell jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 20 kúni 6:48 PM ýaqytynda
The local caching idea? No, it's what we recommend doing. Thousands already do this, and is definitely recommended.
NaPs jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 21 kúni 4:44 AM ýaqytynda
Nope, I'm talking about the idea of hosting a public proxy to your service for my users :-). Here is an implementation of the proxy I'm talking about: https://github.com/NaPs/Kubrick/blob/master/kubrick/tmdb_proxy.py
Travis Bell jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 21 kúni 10:07 AM ýaqytynda
That's fine, not much of a difference to us either way. Wouldn't this still use the IP of your server (and not that of the end user) to connect to our APi though?
NaPs jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 21 kúni 11:43 AM ýaqytynda
Yes, my server will always do the queries to your API instead of the user.
Travis Bell jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 21 kúni 11:48 AM ýaqytynda
Yes, so as I mentioned above ^ that will only work so far. We do rate limiting based on IP address, not API key. With more and more users your single IP will be doing more and more requests and will very likely easily trip our rate limiting.
NaPs jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 21 kúni 11:53 AM ýaqytynda
Is it possible to get an higher limit for my ip? Else I will try to make my queries from various IPs...
Travis Bell jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 21 kúni 12:28 PM ýaqytynda
Unfortunately, no. We do not issue custom rate limits.
NaPs jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 21 kúni 1:43 PM ýaqytynda
Ok, thank you for your help. I will announce my software soon, we'll see if it works :-).
Karl Dietz jaýaby
2013 Aqpan 24 kúni 2:15 PM ýaqytynda
Might be an idea to add support for X-Forwarded-For so ISPs with web proxies, or this custom tmdb proxy, are not penalized when they actually take load of the main servers.