Radarr: Better error message when external resource such as themoviedb.org is down

[gbeekmans]

I am unable to search for movies after applying updates to Radarr, Jackett, Mono and the rest of the Linux OS this all runs on. Initially I thought one of the updates was the cause and thus began the long journey of rolling back package updates one at a time which ended up being a wild goose chase unfortunately wasting a few hours.

The error message in the web GUI was simply:
There Was An Error Searching For 'movie name'

The error log contained:

19-8-12 21:44:16.6|Fatal|NzbDroneErrorPipeline|Request Failed

[v0.2.0.1358] Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReaderException: Unexpected character encountered while parsing value: b. Path '', line 0, position 0.
  at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader.ParseValue () [0x002c2] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader.ReadInternal () [0x00043] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonTextReader.Read () [0x00007] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.ReadForType (Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReader reader, Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonContract contract, System.Boolean hasConverter) [0x0003d] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.JsonSerializerInternalReader.Deserialize (Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReader reader, System.Type objectType, System.Boolean checkAdditionalContent) [0x000dd] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer.DeserializeInternal (Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReader reader, System.Type objectType) [0x00057] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer.Deserialize (Newtonsoft.Json.JsonReader reader, System.Type objectType) [0x00000] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject (System.String value, System.Type type, Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializerSettings settings) [0x0002d] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject[T] (System.String value, Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializerSettings settings) [0x00000] in <5e099fb6434a463a960f4009caf8abae>:0
  at NzbDrone.Common.Serializer.Json.Deserialize[T] (System.String json) [0x00000] in <7084924a59f8492b9528f8e6bea68198>:0
  at NzbDrone.Common.Http.HttpResponse`1[T]..ctor (NzbDrone.Common.Http.HttpResponse response) [0x00025] in <7084924a59f8492b9528f8e6bea68198>:0
  at NzbDrone.Common.Http.HttpClient.Get[T] (NzbDrone.Common.Http.HttpRequest request) [0x00007] in <7084924a59f8492b9528f8e6bea68198>:0
  at NzbDrone.Core.MetadataSource.SkyHook.SkyHookProxy.SearchForNewMovie (System.String title) [0x00275] in <28071e62f2f449e682962e05af20a3d7>:0
  at NzbDrone.Api.Movies.MovieLookupModule.Search () [0x0009b] in <0f2a435164944a8d9e5d219b0531f695>:0
  at NzbDrone.Api.Movies.MovieLookupModule.<.ctor>b__2_0 (System.Object x) [0x00000] in <0f2a435164944a8d9e5d219b0531f695>:0
  at (wrapper dynamic-method) System.Object.CallSite.Target(System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Closure,System.Runtime.CompilerServices.CallSite,System.Func`2<object, object>,object)
  at Nancy.Routing.Route+<>c__DisplayClass4.<Wrap>b__3 (System.Object parameters, System.Threading.CancellationToken context) [0x00049] in <63c44d6f8d7e4f339a987bf9eb94d931>:0

All of this did not really offer any clues. At the point of failure I thought it was having trouble communicating with Jackett (which was updated at the time of failure).

It wasn't until I thought to enable trace logging that showed the actual problem:

19-8-12 21:44:16.6|Trace|HttpClient|Res: [GET] https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/movie?api_key=api&query=myquery&year=&include_adult=False: 503.ServiceUnavailable

And going to the api.themoviedb.org URL itself showed a simple message:

be right back

So all this debugging for nothing because themoviedb is down, not because of local server issues.

All this is to lead to the actual purpose of this bug report: rather than display messages and errors that would lead one to think something else is going on, could an additional check be done so that such errors from external resources are detected and display in the web GUI "api.themoviedb.org is down. Please try again later"

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[y2kbadbug]

I agree, noticed this same issue.

[tripflex]

Yeah having same issues, shows "be right back" so API must be down, there's a post on reddit about this as well:
https://www.reddit.com/r/radarr/comments/cpmhdz/unable_to_add_new_movies_via_search/

[tripflex]

Wondering if maybe it would be good to have some kind of backup in place for when things like this happen? From reddit sounds like IMDB is still possible, but figured i would start the conversation about it

Their twitter also mentioned that everything is back to normal, but i'm still having issues:
https://twitter.com/themoviedb/status/1161148182270603264

[y2kbadbug]

I tried using the imdb: prefix but that didn't work for me either. Maybe some kind of way to select different databases?

[CurtC2]

I also found that imdb: didn't work. I had a few things I wanted to add, so I ended up creating and connecting to a trakt list to work around it...

[bakerboy448]

Closing
v0.2 is no longer being actively developed.

If this is still an issue/request on recent v3 builds, please open a new issue.