A simple Ruby script I wrote to download the IMDB Plain Text DB. Simply save it as a file with executable permissions and it will hopefully work.

imdb_db_downloader

#!/usr/bin/env ruby --disable-gems
# vim: set ft=ruby:
require 'net/ftp'
require 'benchmark'

#Consts
IMDB_FTP_HOST = 'ftp.fu-berlin.de'
IMDB_FTP_DATA_PATH = '/pub/misc/movies/database'
README = <<-README
  This is a simple Ruby script that downloads the entire IMDB Plain Text DB into a specified folder.
  If no arguments are passed to it, the DB will be downloaded to the current directory.
  The first argument passed to it can be the full path where the DB will be saved into.

  Written by Itay Adler (@itayad)
README

if ARGV[0].nil?
  target_path = File.expand_path(__FILE__)
elsif ARGV[0] == '-h'
  puts README
  exit(1)
else
  target_path = ARGV[0]
end

puts 'Connecting to IMDB FTP'
imdb_ftp = Net::FTP.new(IMDB_FTP_HOST)
imdb_ftp.login
imdb_ftp.chdir(IMDB_FTP_DATA_PATH)

files_to_download = imdb_ftp.nlst('*.gz')

puts "Downloading IMDB DB files to #{target_path}"
time = Benchmark.realtime do
  files_to_download.each do |file| 
    puts "Downloading #{file}"
    imdb_ftp.getbinaryfile(file, "#{target_path}/#{file}")
    puts "Finished downloading #{file}"
  end
end
puts "Finished downloading IMDB DB in #{time/60} minutes"