This is a "quick-starter" for the impatient. A more thorough documentation can
be found in the project wiki, please refer to
http://projects.izzysoft.de/trac/imdbphp/wiki
                                                                                         
To use this API you need to have a php installation. They have been 
tested in Linux running apache2 and php 5.x but should probably work
on any php installation version 5 or higher.
                                                                                         
To install it:
- this API requires PEARs HTTP_Request class (see pear.php.net)
  or the browser emulator class (included with this distribution).

- Untar the archive.
- move the imdbphp* directory under your document root.
- cd to the conf/ dir, where you will find a sample ini file (*.sample).
  Copy that as described in its "head comments", and check at least the
  following values:
  - 'cachedir' should point to the directory where pages retrieved from IMDB
    will be stored and used if information for the same movie is requested
    again. The web server process must have read/write access to this directory.
    If does not necessarily have to be inside the web servers document root.
    If you don't want to use caching you can set it to an empty string; in that
    case make sure to also set 'usecache' and 'storecache' to 0 (FALSE).
  - 'photoroot' should be set to a directory where cover images are stored
    with photo_localurl(). If you don't intent to use this function you can
    leave it empty. The specified directory should also be read/write accessible
    by the user that runs the web server process.
  You can safely comment out everything else; if anything is not defined in the
  *.ini file, defaults from the mdb_config.class.php will be used.
- test it:
  - point your browser to the imdbphp* dir (e.g. "http://localhost/imdb/")
  - enter a search term
    a test script (imdbsearch.php) will be opened and perform your search
    using the imdbsearch class.
  - select a movie for the results.
    a test script (imdb.php) will be opened and retrieve details for the
    selected movie using the imdb class. This script uses most of the functions
    from imdb.class.php and is a good start to learn how to use the class. It
    is, however, only intended as a demo to get you started.
  - after you have tested the script with a couple of movies, and if you use
    cache, you can check cache.php - this script shows a list of the movies
    that are in cache. In this script you can also see how to use the same
    object to get information on multiple movies.
- if you use IMDBPHP in your application you probably want to remove imdb.php,
  imdbsearch.php and cache.php

To get started, next to the sample code to be found in the imdb.php file of
this distributions archive, an API reference is included and can also be found
at the projects page for your convinience:
http://projects.izzysoft.de/trac/imdbphp/wiki/ApiReference

If you find an IMDB movie for which this API doesn't work right in any way,
please try to reproduce on the demos first to confirm it is not just a problem
with your local installation. You can find links to the latest release and
development setups at http://projects.izzysoft.de/trac/imdbphp/wiki/Demo
If your problem is reproducable there, or you think your special case cannot
be verified this way (e.g. because it affects a method not covered by the
demo code), check if there's already an open ticket for this at
http://projects.izzysoft.de/trac/imdbphp/report/1 – if not, please open one.
