Please provide an API for accessing Shanaproject via XML (for software like Popcorn Time, KODI, etc.)
Issue #76
new
Shana Project is a great step ahead for the fansub scene. The best way to track new seasons of anime and episodes. But there is something very important that is still missing. An API for accessing the database.
We want to add your website as an Anime Provider to Popcorn Time ( https://popcorntime.io/ ). But currently there is no API to access your series and torrents informations with a query. If I want to ask the API "give me the first 20 entries of anime tv series of the year 2014 ordered by date" (or ordered alphabetically or by rating), it should provide me with those via a simple http request. And each entry should include different amounts of informations according to the query. A query can asks only for the fields "title", "date", "ratings", "AniDB ID", etc. of each entry for the initial listing on Popcorn. And then asking for more informations on a single entry with a query that asks to include the fields "available episodes", "torrents available for this episode", "episode ID on AniDB", "torrents fansub group", "torrent resolution", etc. Those are the same information you serve on the web page, only in a more light and easy to parse XML format. Currently Popcorn Time uses the Haruhichan API, but its a mess. A collaboration between Shanaproject and Popcorn Time for the Anime section would be great.
I've also noted that there is currently no direct link of the associated anime ID on AniDB.net to recover episode titles, infos and ratings of an anime, but you just search the anime title on the website. Of course this is not reliable because of the various different names and spellings of the anime series. The API should provide the exact anime ID of the series on AniDB to allow Popcorn Time to scrape thumbs and infos from the AniDB API.
Please help us with this. You can get in touch with us on the Gitlab page:
https://git.popcorntime.io/popcorntime/desktop/issues
Or in the popcorn help forum: https://discuss.popcorntime.io/
Of course, once created, the API would be useful to all torrent streaming apps like Popcorn Time, and for dozen of media browsers like KODI, Plex, etc. that are now supporting torrent streaming. Thank you for you great work.
Comments (5)
-
repo owner
-
I might need to point out that this was not posted by any of the Popcorn Time team members. How do I know? Because I am a member of that team. Somebody just started a discussion on our forum about the Anime section, that's where this comes from.
That a link with AniDB or ANN is not possible is something I already tried to explain. Without success, it seems.
We will contact you over IRC when we really start considering this. I already joined your channel.
-
Hi I'm trying to make an app for downloading anime and I would love it if you guys could make an API. I think it's best if you guys just put it in whatever format you are most comfortable with and people who want to use the API can parse it however they want.
Thanks
-
Hi, I second the request for an API
Before I list the types of things I would like to see in an API, I'll just make a note on the linking between Shana Project and AniDB. This sort of thing is would be great, but there are other options out there such as XEM http://thexem.de/
This already supports AniDB to TvDB/Tv Rage/etc
Things I would like to see from an API (for use in my app JMM - http://japanesemediamanager.github.io/)
Manage follows
- Add Follow
- Get follows for a series
- Remove Follow
- Send to RSS
Queries
- Search Series
- Search Releases
- Search Release Groups
- Get Releases (by series / group)
Other stuff
- Would be good if it was a RESTful API and supported xml and json (my personal preference is json)
- Authentication could be just basic auth using the end user's credentials
I also think it is unreasonable for the API to specify which fields they want returned. It is easy enough to pick the fields you want on the client side as well as doing filtering and sorting.
-
This might not help with production applications, but I wrote a desktop client for Windows in Go that syncs up your currently watching anime with ShanaProject if you have Taiga. This saves me quite a bit of time at the start of each season. Check it out here: https://github.com/zehric/taiga2shana
- Log in to comment
Hey, a lot of this sounds great (and wouldn't be hard); but the problem is mostly time constraints (having the time to work on something like this).
There are a few things you've requested that are simply not possibly too... For example the AniDB link simply isn't possible. It would require that someone (me) spends the time finding AniDB id's for every show each season (and potentially for old seasons) and thats just completely unrealistic (hence why we just do the search). Let alone doing the same for every episode!
Have you got a specific API format in mind?