Stremio Add-on to Add an IMDB Watchlist as a Catalog

This is a simple add-on that uses an ajax call to get a list of items from IMDB, then converts those items to Stremio supported Meta Objects.

Using locally

Pre-requisites: Node.js, Git

git clone https://github.com/jaruba/stremio-imdb-watchlist.git
cd stremio-imdb-watchlist
npm i
npm start

This will print http://127.0.0.1:7505/[imdb-user-id]/manifest.json. Add a IMDB list id instead of [imdb-user-id] in this URL and load the add-on in Stremio.

Using remotely

Use https://1fe84bc728af-imdb-watchlist.beamup.dev/[imdb-user-id]/manifest.json. Add a IMDB list id instead of [imdb-user-id] in this URL and load the add-on in Stremio.

What is a IMDB List ID

Presuming that the user profile page you want to add is https://www.imdb.com/user/ur1000000/, the IMDB user id in this case is ur1000000.

How this add-on was made

1. Create a package.json and add dependencies

{
  "name": "stremio-imdb-watchlist",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "Add-on to create a catalog of your IMDB user watchlist.",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node index.js"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "needle": "^2.2.4",
    "cheerio": "1.0.0-rc.2",
    "express": "^4.16.4",
    "cors": "^2.8.5",
    "named-queue": "^2.2.1"
  }
}

We will use needle to make the html page request, cheerio to create a jQuery instance of the HTML content, express to create the add-on http server, cors to easily add CORS to our http server responses and named-queue because although we'll get two catalog requests (one for movies and one for series), we only need to do one ajax request as IMDB lists include both. That's where named-queue comes in, as it merges tasks by id, so we only do one ajax request to respond to both catalog requests.

2. Add-on manifest

In this step, we define the add-on name, description and purpose.

Create an index.js file:

const manifest = {

  // set add-on id, any string unique between add-ons
  id: 'org.imdbwatchlist',

  // setting a semver add-on version is mandatory
  version: '0.0.1',

  // human readable add-on name
  name: 'IMDB Watchlist Add-on',

  // description of the add-on
  description: 'Add-on to create a catalog of your IMDB user watchlist.',

  // we only need 'catalog' for this add-on, can also be 'meta', 'stream' and 'subtitles'
  resources: ['catalog'],

  // we set the add-on types, can also be 'tv', 'channel' and 'other'
  types: ['movie', 'series'],

  // we define our catalogs, we'll make one for 'movies' and one for 'series'
  catalogs: [
    {
      // id of catalog, any string unique between this add-ons catalogs
      id: 'imdb-movie-watchlist',

      // human readable catalog name
      name: 'IMDB Movie Watchlist',

      // the type of this catalog provides
      type: 'movie'
    }, {
      id: 'imdb-series-watchlist',
      name: 'IMDB Series Watchlist',
      type: 'series'
    }
  ]
}


// create add-on server
const express = require('express')
const app = express()
const cors = require('cors')

// add CORS to server responses
app.use(cors())

// respond to the manifest request
app.get('/:imdbUser/manifest.json', (req, res) => {
  res.setHeader('Cache-Control', 'max-age=604800') // one week
  res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json')
  res.send(manifest)
})

3. Get Watchlist ID from User ID

Now we need to get the watchlist ID based on the user ID the add-on user provides.

// we'll use needle to request the HTML page
const needle = require('needle')

// we'll use cheerio to create a jQuery instance from the HTML page
const cheerio = require('cheerio')

// set request headers to have Chrome Android user agent
const headers = {
  'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.0.0; TA-1053 Build/OPR1.170623.026) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/67.0.3368.0 Mobile Safari/537.36',
}

// object to cache our watchlist ID based on user ID
const cacheLists = {}

// function to get list id from user id
function getListId(userId, cb) {

  // check if it's in cache first
  if (cacheLists[userId]) {
    cb(false, cacheLists[userId])
    return
  }

  // set request referer to the user page of the user id
  headers.referer = 'https://m.imdb.com/user/'+userId+'/'

  // set request url, in this case, the watchlist page of the user
  const getUrl = 'https://m.imdb.com/user/'+userId+'/watchlist/'

  // send request
  needle.get(getUrl, { headers }, (err, resp) => {
    if (!err && resp && resp.body) {

      // load jQuery instance from the HTML page
      const $ = cheerio.load(resp.body)

      const listMeta = $('meta[property="pageId"]')

      // check to see if the needed HTML element exists
      if (!listMeta || listMeta.length != 1) {
        cb('Error parsing page #1')
        return
      }

      // get list id from page
      const listId = listMeta.attr('content')

      // check list id for sanity
      if (!listId || !listId.startsWith('ls')) {
        cb('Error parsing page #2')
        return
      }

      // cache list id
      cacheLists[userId] = listId

      // respond with the list id
      cb(false, listId)

    } else {
      // respond with error
      cb(err || 'Empty html body when requesting list id')
    }
  })
}

4. Proxy a Different Add-on to get List Responses Based on List ID

We won't handle converting IMDB items to Stremio Meta Objects in this guide, we will proxy a different add-on that does this. The secondary add-on will be stremio-imdb-list, the source code for it and a guide on how it was made can found here.

// we use `named-queue` to merge more tasks
// with the same user id
const namedQueue = require('named-queue')

const queue = new namedQueue((task, cb) => {
  // get the list id from user id with the
  // function from the previous step
  getListId(task.id, cb)
}, Infinity)

// where the secondary add-on is hosted
const listEndpoint = 'https://1fe84bc728af-imdb-list.beamup.dev/'

function getList(type, userId, cb) {
  queue.push({ id: userId }, (listErr, listId) => {
    if (listId) {
      // list id is correct, let's request the
      // list contents from the secondary add-on
      const getUrl = listEndpoint + listId + '/date_added/catalog/' + type + '/imdb-' + type + '-list.json'
      needle.get(getUrl, { headers }, (err, resp) => {
        if (err) {
          // failed, send error
          cb(err)
        } else if (!resp || !resp.body) {
          // failed, send error
          cb('Empty list response from endpoint')
        }
        else {
          // success, return result
          cb(false, resp.body)
        }
      })
    } else {
      // request failed, send error
      cb(listErr || 'Could not get watchlist id')
    }
  })
}

5. Catalog Handler

We create the catalog handler, get the user id from the user as it's part of the add-on url and merge http requests for the same user id.

// users pass the user id in the add-on url
// this will be available as `req.params.imdbUser`
app.get('/:imdbUser/catalog/:type/:id.json', (req, res) => {

  // handle failures
  function fail(err) {
    console.error(err)
    res.writeHead(500)
    res.end(JSON.stringify({ err: 'handler error' }))
  }

  // ensure request parameters are known
  if (req.params.imdbUser && ['movie','series'].indexOf(req.params.type) > -1) {
    // use function from previous step
    // to get list items from user id
    getList(req.params.type, req.params.imdbUser, (err, resp) => {
      if (resp) {
        res.setHeader('Cache-Control', 'max-age=86400') // one day
        res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json')
        res.send(resp)
      } else 
        fail(err)
    })
  } else
    fail('Unknown request parameters')
})

6. Run the Add-on Server

app.listen(7505, () => {
    console.log('http://127.0.0.1:7505/[imdb-user-id]/manifest.json')
})

7. Install Add-on in Stremio