(Books Library/Manga) Add MangaDex as metadata and include some Options.

[Kyouma 7]

Hello, I'd like to have some Options to make it more usable for Manga.

• Let us Group Volumes of one Series into one Entry, the same way with Series/Seasons on TV shows. This would reduce the clutter, when having 10 Mangas with 10+ Volumes each.
• Give us an Option to use the first page as the Cover. This will be in the best quality and the correct language.
• Add MangaDex as a metadata provider. They have a free public api and this might also be needed for the grouping.
• Adding Google Books for missing Info (like synopsis for Volumes) would compliment it. Same with TVDB and TMDB on TV Series.

These changes + the progress save, would make it perfectly usable for me.
 

This will fill up quickly with more Manga added and will become messy.

Spoiler

This would be the first page of the Manga. It will be in the correct language and be of best quality.

Spoiler

 

Thank you for reading.

[Luke 42077]

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•  
• Give us an Option to use the first page as the Cover. This will be in the best quality and the correct language.

Hi, not a bad idea, although it would require building out that capability of being able to extract a page as an image.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

•  
• Add MangaDex as a metadata provider. They have a free public api and this might also be needed for the grouping.

Looks promising. Are they popular?

[Kyouma 7]

Thank you fro your reply.

7 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, not a bad idea, although it would require building out that capability of being able to extract a page as an image.

Would be great to have this in the long run.

7 hours ago, Luke said:

Looks promising. Are they popular?

As far as i can tell, yes. But they also provide the feature to read on their site so keep that in mind.
There is also JIKAN api (unofficial api for MyAnimeList). They have less Data than MangaDex.

But MangaDex + Google Books should provide the best value in terms of metadata.

[ebr 16169]

The third requirement is a problem for us:

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We make our API entirely public and free to use exclusively for projects that satisfy the following:

1. You MUST credit MangaDex
2. You MUST credit scanlation groups (and honor their content removal requests) if you allow reading chapters
3. You CANNOT run ads or paid services on your website and/or apps

 

[Kyouma 7]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

The third requirement is a problem for us:

 

Didn't think about that, that's too bad.

 

What do you think about this one:

JIKAN API: Get Started mentions a rate limit of 3 requests per second, 60 per minute and unlimted daily. Couldn't find anything else regarding limts.

It provides at least: synopsis, author, volume count, chapter count, genre and title.

If that is enough to be able to group the Volumes into one entry, than that would satisfy me. We don't need the covers, if we can use the first page of the volume as the cover.

If we want more metadata for the volumes, then we could use google books in combination.

 

There is also AniList and Kitsu Api. Can't tell how useful Kitsu might be.

Though for AniList they have this, might also be a probem.

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Commercial Usage

The AniList API may be used within commercial applications or services operating at less than $150 of revenue per month free of charge, no express permission is required.

Applications or services operating at greating than $150 of revenue per month will need to acquire a commercial license. If you would like to use the AniList API in a commercial product, send an email to contact@anilist.co and we can discuss it.

 

Edited October 26, 2025 by Kyouma

[Neminem 1518]

Are they scraping off MyAnimeList ?

Jikan REST API v4 Docs

Edited October 26, 2025 by Neminem

[Kyouma 7]

Yes that seems to be the case, because MyAnimeList api is very lacking. Don't know if emby has an issue with that.

But i also mentioned 2 other candidates (or at least 1) in the post above yours, but it seems that the edit has to be approved.

[Luke 42077]

A community member could still build their own plugin for this though. We just couldn't put it in our plugin catalog without having some kind of agreement with MangaDex.

[Kyouma 7]

15 hours ago, Luke said:

A community member could still build their own plugin for this though. We just couldn't put it in our plugin catalog without having some kind of agreement with MangaDex.

Unfortunetely my coding skills are non existent. Maybe one of the other could be useful for the emby team. (AniList, JIKAN API, Kitsu API)