Accessing Metacritic API and/or Scraping

Question

Does anybody know where documentation for the Metacritic api is/if it still works. There used to be a Metacritic API at https://market.mashape.com/byroredux/metacritic-v2#get-user-details which disappeared today.

Otherwise I'm trying to scrape the site myself but keeping getting a blocked by a 429 Slow down. I got data like 3 times this hour and haven't been able to get anymore in the last 20 minutes which is making testing difficult and application possibly useless. Please let me know if there's anything else I can be doing to scape I don't know about.

Answer 1

I was using that API as well for an app I wrote a while ago. Looks like the creator removed it from Mashape. I just sent him an email to ask whether it'll be back up. I did find this scraper online. It only has a few endpoints but following the examples given you could easily add more. Let me know if you make any progress!

Edit: Looks like CBS requested it to be taken down. The ToS prohibits scraping:

[…] you agree not to do the following, or assist others to do the following: Engage in unauthorized spidering, “scraping,” data mining or harvesting of Content, or use any other unauthorized automated means to gather data from or about the Services;

Answer 2

Though I was hoping for a Javascript way of doing this, the creator of the API also told me some info.

He says I was getting blocked for not having a User agent in the header and should use a 429 handling procedure i.e. re-request with longer pauses in between.

A PHP plugin available as well: http://datalinx.io/shop/metacritic-api/