IMDB Details Grabber: Using PHP DOM XPath to extract Movie details

Recently, a friend of mine asked me if there's an IMDB Parser that allows to fetch information about any Movie on IMDB. Unfortunately, IMDB does not offer an API, so , after doing a bit googling I found nice IMDB Grabber (PHP IMDB Grabber), despite it being a good one, I decided develop my own class relying on XPath and Dom Traversing.

Brief Explanation of Methods:

The Class 'class.imdb.php' has 3 useful Methods (in addition other ones). They are:

Usage (Basic):

Using the class is very easy. Include the class file, initialize the class and then invoke get($url), where $url is the IMDB URL for movie.

include 'path/to/class/class.imdb.php';
$imdbObj   = new Imdb();

// movieInfo contains the details of Movies in associative array format
$movieInfo = $imdbObj->get('http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/');

// OR simply enter the movie name :)
$movieInfo = $imdbObj->get('The Matrix');

Here's a vardump of movieInfo:

Array
(
    [title:] => The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

    [image:] => http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjE4MjA1NTAyMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzM1NDQyMQ@@._V1._SX94_SY140_.jpg

    [url:] => http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/

    [Plot:] => The former Fellowship of the Ring prepare for the final battle for Middle Earth, while Frodo & Sam approach Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring.|
    [Director:] => Peter Jackson
    [Release Date:] => 17 December 2003 (USA)

    [Runtime:] => 201 min  | 251 min (extended edition)

)

That's it, simple enough!. By Default, title, image, url, Plot, Director, Release Date and Runtime is returned. All Keys of the associative array as suffixed with ':' (colon), I leave it upto developers to either strip it out, or just display it.

Usage (Customization and Advanced Usage):

By default, the class fetches the title, image, url, Plot, Director, Release Date and Runtime, Aspect Ratio, Writers, from IMDB.

If you wish to grab the cast in the movie, then call the following method:

$imdbObj->showCast(true);

CSV: By Default, all Values returned are in CSV Format, if you want to get value as list of array, for example for Writers, you way want to get the list of Writers as in Array instead of CSV. In that case do the following:

$imdbObj   = new Imdb();
$movieInfo = $imdbObj->showCast(true)
                                     ->useCSV(false)
                                     ->get('http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/');

View Demo Download from Github