Description:
The MyAnimeListAgent is a Metadata Agent for the Plex Media Server and is used to parse data from a source into the server. Since MyAnimelist.net does not provide a easy to use and complete API for their database I wrote the fribbtastic-api to parse the website and return the necessary data for the Agent to work. After the Scanner scans your files on your hard drive and added them to your library a search query to my API is triggered and the result with the highest conformity will be used to trigger a detailed request. This detailed request contains everything that is parseable like the title, the rank or all available Episodes.
The MyAnimeListAgent can be used for Tv-Shows and Movies.
To provide more Image Information like Backgrounds and Banners the API provides these from TheTVDB.
Note:
- Every Anime is cached in a Database to limit the requests made to the myanimelist.net website. Animes are cached for 7 days.
- Popular Animes like Naruto, Bleach or One Piece who provide many information will take some time to complete the request. So if you have an Anime that is not getting recognized or filled with Metadata, try to refresh the anime after clearing the plugin cache.
- My API, which provides the Data, is only parsing the Data from MyAnimeList.net which means if there are missing Episode titles then it is possible that they aren’t added yet.
- If Episodes are not available on MyAnimeList.net this Agent will set the Title to “Episode: X” and the date to the date you are adding it to your library. This means that you can still watch your anime from the “On Deck” Feature even if the original date is not available.
Installation:
Works best with: BABS – Better absolute Scanner
Scanner Installation:
Windows: C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Scanners\Series
Linux: /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Scanners/Series
If the Folders Scanners and Series do not exist then you need to create them.
Agent Installation:
- Stop Plex Media Server
- Copy the MyAnimeList.bundle folder into your plugins folder (Where is my Plugins folder?)
- Start Plex Media Server
Help:
For all Bugrepots go here.
To figure out what happened I need the following Information: The Title and the Id of the Anime and If possible append the Log file to your post (how to find your log file!)
Screenshots:
Download:
Current Release:
Frequently asked Questions:
Q: Why do I have less Anime in my Plex library then I have on my file system?
A: This could happen because of 2 reasons:
First, the scanner can’t identify the episodes and therefore won’t create a new entry and won’t add this episode to your this entry. You need to prepare your media before you can add them to your library!
Second, your anime entry is getting merged with other entries. This happens because the initial scan of your anime episodes will remove characters from the title like ‘.’ so that you only have letters as a title. While searching for an item the results from that search could be different: For example if you have both seasons of Kon (Kon! and Kon!!) then the search will result in different search results, but, since plex is expecting a comparison of the titles for a match score to auto-select the result with the highest score it is possible that the wrong result could be picked. In the next image, I searched for Kon!
And since Kon!! the first entry it will be chosen for the right match and since Kon! and Kon!! both results in the same behavior they both get merged into one entry. You can fix this by splitting the merged entry again!
Q: Why can’t I get metadata for my anime even though there are search results?
A: If you named it correctly (like it is named on myanimelist) then you should at least get search results. If you have search results than missing metadata information could be reason that myanimelist either has no information on the missing piece available or because my API tries to refresh the data and is getting blocked by myanimelist. Check myanimelist if the information are available, if they are then they weren’t cached by my API because of the request being blocked by myanimelist, the cache refreshes every 7 days so you would need to wait that long.
Q: But why does Myanimelist block you?
A: Simple answer: Because I access too many times the website.
Long answer: Because of safety precautions it is good to limit the amount of requests a single user can do in a specific amount of time, which is in this case my API. When a single user now updates a single anime you got 1 request for the search, 1 for the information, 1 for covers, and 1 for each 100 Episodes. That is already 3 requests in under a minute for an anime that only has 24 episodes. If you request an anime with multiple hundreds of episodes for example One Piece (770 episodes at the moment) or Naruto, One Piece alone has 11 requests in under a minute. So if the limit is reached that allows one User to access the site the next requests will be blocked with a “too many requests” error.
Q: Myanimelist has Episode synopsis, why does your agent don’t use it?
A: Simply because of the prior described problem. I would need to do a single request for EACH episode to get the synopsis and if we stick to the One piece Example would result in 773 requests in a really short time. I’m glad that myanimelist didn’t block my UserAgent yet but if I do this they will block it for sure and then we won’t get any data in any feasible amount of time.
Q: I don’t get Background pictures for an anime, is your agent broken?
A: Probably not! Like I said my API grabs stuff from myanimelist and MAL doesn’t provide background pictures at all, only additional covers. However It requests these Pictures from TheTVDB.com but because I search for the name there can be spelling or naming issues or differences that my APIs matching algorithm just discards because it doesn’t reach a high enough number (80% I believe).
Q: I still don’t get any Metadata in Plex!
A: If you named it correctly, get search results on a manual match and myanimelist has the information and you still get no metadata then you might have found a bug, You can tell me about it here.
