[Developers] Upcoming change to film & actor IMDb URIs

[Christopher R. Maden]

Short version: if you are using /film/film/imdb_id or 
/film/actor/imdb_entry and expecting a URI, your application may break.

Right now, many films and actors have IMDb Web links associated with 
them.  However, there is no enforcement of uniqueness or collision, nor 
is there necessarily consistency in the syntax of those URIs.

On sandbox, I am taking advantage of a new feature, property 
enumeration.  There are three new namespaces:

/authority/imdb/character
/authority/imdb/name
/authority/imdb/title

The keys in these namespaces will correspond to IMDb character, personal 
name, and title URIs.  Template features mean that client users will see 
Web links, and if they add matching links, keys in these namespaces will 
actually be stored instead.  It will also prevent duplication; there can 
only be one actor with the name key nm0000347.

The downside is that if your application is expecting a URI as the value 
of the /film/film/imdb_id or /film/actor/imdb_entry properties, it will 
break.  Instead, it will now get a key value from which the URI can 
easily be constructed.

If this is a problem for you, please speak up soon.

~Chris
-- 
Christopher R. Maden
Data Architect
Freebase.com: <URL: http://www.freebase.com/ >
Metaweb Technologes, Inc. <URL: http://www.metaweb.com/ >