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browse-cinema-showtimes

Installation

Adds this website's skill for your agents

 

Summary

Enumerate every cinema in a BookMyShow city, then extract each theatre's full showtimes across all bookable dates — movies, formats (2D/3D/IMAX/4DX), per-showtime subtext (IMAX/Dolby/GOLD), availability, and prices — as clean JSON.

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SKILL.md
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Browse Cinema Showtimes by Theatre (BookMyShow India)

Purpose

Enumerate every cinema in a BookMyShow city, then for each theatre extract the full showtimes schedule across all bookable dates the venue offers — every movie, every format variant (2D / 3D / IMAX 3D / 4DX / 4DX 3D / Dolby Atmos), and every individual showtime with its subtext (the small per-show experience label such as IMAX, PLAYHOUSE, GOLD, DOLBY ATMOS), screen/audi name, availability, price range, and session id. This is a read-only extraction — it never selects seats, books, or pays. The optimal path is a plain residential-proxy HTTP fetch: every theatre's showtimes page is server-side rendered and ships the complete dataset inline in window.__INITIAL_STATE__, so no scripted clicking or headless browser is required.

When to Use

  • "List all cinemas in Bengaluru (or Mumbai, Delhi, etc.) and pull every screening for every date."
  • "What formats/experiences (IMAX, Dolby, 4DX, 3D) is a given movie playing in at theatre X, and at what times?"
  • Building a citywide showtimes dataset / price-and-availability snapshot per theatre.
  • Auditing which shows are sold_out vs fast_filling vs available at a venue.
  • Any task that needs the per-showtime subtext label (it differs per showtime and is not derivable from the movie title alone).

Workflow

BookMyShow is behind Cloudflare (the bare homepage returns 403). Use Browserbase residential proxies for every request: browse cloud fetch <url> --proxies --allow-redirects. All showtimes data is embedded server-side, so this cheap HTTP path returns everything — you do not need a full browser session for extraction.

Step 1 — Enumerate all cinemas in the city

Fetch the city cinemas directory (city is a URL slug, e.g. bengaluru, mumbai, national-capital-region-ncr):

browse cloud fetch "https://in.bookmyshow.com/bengaluru/cinemas" \
  --proxies --allow-redirects --output cinemas.html

Do not scrape <a href> anchors — only ~10 venues are hyperlinked in the SSR HTML. The complete venue list (125 for Bengaluru at time of authoring) lives in the embedded state at:

__INITIAL_STATE__.fetchVenuesListingApi.queries[<only key>].data.venues[]

Each venue object carries VenueCode (the 3–5 char theatre code, e.g. PVFF), VenueName, VenueAddress, City, RegionCode (e.g. BANG for Bengaluru), VenueLatitude, VenueLongitude, SubRegionCode. Collect {VenueCode, VenueName, RegionCode} for every entry.

Step 2 — For each venue, get its showtimes + the list of bookable dates

The showtimes page URL is:

https://in.bookmyshow.com/cinemas/{city}/{any-slug}/buytickets/{VENUE_CODE}/{YYYYMMDD}

The {any-slug} segment is cosmetic — BookMyShow 301-redirects to the canonical slug based on VENUE_CODE, so pass --allow-redirects and any placeholder (e.g. x) works. Fetch today's date first to discover the full date list:

browse cloud fetch "https://in.bookmyshow.com/cinemas/bengaluru/x/buytickets/PVFF/20260710" \
  --proxies --allow-redirects --output venue-today.html

Extract the RTK-Query cache entry (key format getShowtimesByVenue-{VENUE_CODE}-{YYYYMMDD}):

__INITIAL_STATE__.venueShowtimesFunctionalApi.queries["getShowtimesByVenue-PVFF-20260710"].data

data.ShowDatesArray[] is the authoritative list of all bookable dates for this venue (each has DateCode = YYYYMMDD, DispDate, Day, isDisabled). Note dates are not contiguous — a venue may sell Fri/Sat/Sun this week and skip ahead to the next Fri, so always iterate ShowDatesArray, never a generated calendar range.

Step 3 — Iterate every bookable date

For each DateCode in ShowDatesArray where isDisabled === false, fetch the same URL with that date and parse data.showDetailsTransformed (see Step 4). You already have today's payload from Step 2 — reuse it, only fetch the remaining dates.

Step 4 — Parse showDetailsTransformed into clean JSON

data.showDetailsTransformed.Event[] is the list of movies. The movie title is on the Event, but rating/genre/language/format/showtimes live on its ChildEvents. Structure:

  • Event[].EventTitle — movie title (e.g. Moana). Event-level EventCensor/EventGenre/EventDuration are empty — read them from ChildEvents.
  • Event[].ChildEvents[] — one entry per format × language variant. Fields: EventDimension (2D, 3D, IMAX 3D, 4DX, 4DX 3D, …), EventLanguage, EventCensor (UA 7+), EventGenre (object whose keys are genre names), EventCode (ET00506144), EventName (Moana (IMAX 3D) - English), EventUrl, EventIsAtmosEnabled.
  • ChildEvents[].ShowTimes[] — the individual showtimes. Key fields:
    • ShowTime — display time (07:30 PM); ShowDateTime — YYYYMMDDHHMM.
    • Attributes → this is the per-showtime subtext the UI renders under each time pill (IMAX, PLAYHOUSE, GOLD, DOLBY ATMOS, …). Empty string means no subtext. ScreenName (AUDI 1 IMAX) is the raw audi and often contains the same signal.
    • AvailStatus — 3 = available (green), 1/2 = fast filling (orange), 0 = sold out (grey). SessionId, ShowTimeCode, MinPrice/MaxPrice, Categories[] (per-tier price/availability), CutOffDateTime.

Emit the JSON shape shown in Expected Output.

Extracting __INITIAL_STATE__ from the HTML

The state is assigned via window.__INITIAL_STATE__ = {…};. Locate the marker and brace-match the object (a naive regex will truncate on nested braces). Reference extractor:

function extractState(html){
  const m = html.match(/window\.__INITIAL_STATE__\s*=\s*/);
  if(!m) return null;
  let i=m.index+m[0].length, depth=0, start=-1, inStr=false, esc=false;
  for(;i<html.length;i++){ const c=html[i];
    if(start===-1){ if(c==='{'){start=i;depth=1;} continue; }
    if(esc){esc=false;continue;} if(c==='\\'){esc=true;continue;}
    if(c==='"'){inStr=!inStr;continue;} if(inStr)continue;
    if(c==='{')depth++; else if(c==='}'){ if(--depth===0) return html.slice(start,i+1); }
  }
  return null;
}
const state = JSON.parse(extractState(html));

Browser fallback

Only needed if the SSR payload shape changes or you must trigger client-side hydration. Create a stealth cloud session (Cloudflare blocks bare sessions), navigate, and read the same state object live:

sid=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive --proxies --verified --region ap-southeast-1 \
  | node -e "let s='';process.stdin.on('data',c=>s+=c).on('end',()=>process.stdout.write(JSON.parse(s).id))")
export BROWSE_SESSION="$sid"
browse open "https://in.bookmyshow.com/cinemas/bengaluru/x/buytickets/PVFF/20260710" --remote --session "$sid"
browse eval --remote --session "$sid" "JSON.stringify(window.__INITIAL_STATE__.venueShowtimesFunctionalApi.queries)"
browse cloud sessions update "$sid" --status REQUEST_RELEASE   # always release when done

The DOM renders each time pill with only the time text as an accessible node; the subtext label is a styled child, so read Attributes from state rather than trying to scrape the pill — DOM scraping loses the subtext reliably.

Site-Specific Gotchas

  • Cloudflare wall. The site is fronted by Cloudflare + WAF; the bare homepage probe returns 403. Residential proxies (--proxies on fetch, or --proxies --verified on a session) are mandatory. With proxies, browse cloud fetch returned 200 with the full embedded state on every request during testing — no CAPTCHA/challenge encountered.
  • recommended_method: fetch, not browser. Everything is server-side rendered into window.__INITIAL_STATE__. A single proxied HTTP GET per (venue, date) yields all data. Spinning up a headless browser and clicking date tabs is slower, costlier, and unnecessary. Confirmed working.
  • Subtext = ShowTimes[].Attributes. The user-visible per-showtime subtext (IMAX / PLAYHOUSE / GOLD / DOLBY ATMOS) is the Attributes string. It is per showtime, differs within the same movie, and is "" for plain shows. Do not confuse it with the movie-row format label, which is ChildEvents[].EventDimension (4DX 3D, IMAX 3D, 3D, 2D).
  • Data lives on ChildEvents, not Event. Event.EventCensor/EventGenre/EventDuration/EventLanguage are empty; the populated values are on each ChildEvent. One movie = one Event with N ChildEvents (one per format×language).
  • Full cinema list is in state, not in anchors. The /{city}/cinemas HTML hyperlinks only ~10 venues; the complete 100+ venue list is in fetchVenuesListingApi.queries[<key>].data.venues. Scraping anchors silently under-counts.
  • Dates are sparse. ShowDatesArray is authoritative and non-contiguous (e.g. 10, 11, 12, then 17, 18, 19 Jul). Iterate the array; never assume "next 7 days". Skip entries with isDisabled: true.
  • Slug is cosmetic. /cinemas/{city}/{slug}/buytickets/{CODE}/{DATE} canonicalizes off {CODE}; a wrong/placeholder slug yields a 301 — pass --allow-redirects and it resolves. Fetching without redirects returns 301 with no body.
  • Query-cache key format. getShowtimesByVenue-{VENUE_CODE}-{YYYYMMDD} for showtimes; the venues query key is a stringified arg object — grab it dynamically with Object.keys(...queries)[0] rather than hard-coding.
  • Region code. Read RegionCode (BANG, etc.) from any venue object if you need it for other BookMyShow endpoints; you do not need it for the fetch pipeline above (venue code + date suffice).
  • No-shows / down venue. When a venue has no sellable shows, data.Event is empty and data.DownCinemasMessage / DownCinemasTitle / AllShowDatesDisabled: true are populated — treat as an empty movies: [] with a notice field rather than an error.
  • __NEXT_DATA__ is absent — this is a custom SSR app (React Router + RTK Query), not Next.js. Look for window.__INITIAL_STATE__ only.
  • Ad/analytics network noise is heavy (DoubleClick, CleverTap, Branch, Sentry, GA); there is no client XHR to a showtimes JSON endpoint — the data arrives inline with the document, which is why the cheap fetch works.

Expected Output

Top-level result: the city, the date the crawl was anchored on, and one entry per cinema. Each cinema lists its bookable dates and, per date, the movies → formats → showtimes (with subtext).

{
  "city": "bengaluru",
  "region_code": "BANG",
  "crawled_on": "20260710",
  "cinema_count": 125,
  "cinemas": [
    {
      "venue_code": "PVFF",
      "venue_name": "PVR: Nexus (Formerly Forum), Koramangala",
      "address": "Nexus Mall, 21-22, Adugodi Main Road, Koramangala, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560095, India",
      "available_dates": ["20260710","20260711","20260712","20260717","20260718","20260719","20260730","20260731","20260801","20260802"],
      "schedule": [
        {
          "date": "20260710",
          "movies": [
            {
              "title": "Moana",
              "formats": [
                {
                  "format": "IMAX 3D",
                  "language": "English",
                  "rating": "UA 7+",
                  "genre": ["Adventure","Comedy","Fantasy"],
                  "event_code": "ET00506144",
                  "showtimes": [
                    { "time": "07:30 PM", "datetime": "202607101930", "subtext": "IMAX", "screen": "AUDI 1 IMAX", "session_id": "51022", "availability": "available", "min_price": 470, "max_price": 620 },
                    { "time": "10:00 PM", "datetime": "202607102200", "subtext": "IMAX", "screen": "AUDI 1 IMAX", "session_id": "51023", "availability": "available", "min_price": 490, "max_price": 590 }
                  ]
                },
                {
                  "format": "4DX 3D",
                  "language": "English",
                  "rating": "UA 7+",
                  "genre": ["Adventure","Comedy","Fantasy"],
                  "event_code": "ET00506627",
                  "showtimes": [
                    { "time": "06:25 PM", "datetime": "202607101825", "subtext": null, "screen": "AUDI 2 4DX", "session_id": "51025", "availability": "available", "min_price": 580, "max_price": 670 }
                  ]
                }
              ]
            },
            {
              "title": "Welcome To The Jungle",
              "formats": [
                {
                  "format": "2D",
                  "language": "Hindi",
                  "rating": "UA16+",
                  "genre": ["Comedy"],
                  "event_code": "ET00369379",
                  "showtimes": [
                    { "time": "06:30 PM", "datetime": "202607101830", "subtext": "GOLD", "screen": "AUDI 10 GOLD", "session_id": "51170", "availability": "sold_out", "min_price": 900, "max_price": 900 },
                    { "time": "10:10 PM", "datetime": "202607102210", "subtext": null, "screen": "AUDI 5", "session_id": "50984", "availability": "available", "min_price": 280, "max_price": 750 }
                  ]
                }
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

availability is derived from AvailStatus: 3 → available, 1/2 → fast_filling, 0 → sold_out. subtext is ShowTimes[].Attributes (null when empty).

Empty/down venue shape:

{
  "venue_code": "XXXX",
  "venue_name": "Some Theatre",
  "available_dates": [],
  "schedule": [],
  "notice": "No shows currently available at this cinema."
}