XBMC MyAnimeList Updater

• Author: Spencer Julian (helloThere@spencerjulian.com)
• Date: May, 2012
• Last Update: May 4, 2014
• Version: 0.4.9
• Github: https://github.com/kuruoujou/XBMal
• Webpage: http://ramblingahoge.net/xbmal

This is free software released under version 3 of the GPL License.

Good day!

This is XBMAL, The XBMC MyAnimeList Updater Plugin. It's still in the early stages and can't quite do everything I want it to yet, but it does work with an XBMC TV Library to update non-specials on MAL.

If you would like to help out (please do!), I could use bug reports and feature requests. If you can code in python and want to help with the coding side of things, go ahead and fork the project. That's what github's for, right?

Usage

You'll first want to backup your MAL account. I'm serious, I can't be sure this won't break things, although it works fine for my list.

If you're installing from the repository, skip the next paragraph.

Once you've backed up (you have backed up, right?), copy the xbmc.script directory into your addons directory. In linux, this is /home/<username>/.xbmc/addons, in windows this is C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\addons, I think. I'm not sure for MAC OS X.

Ok, so you've installed the add on. Start XBMC if it's not already running, and navigate to Addons -> Enabled Add-ons -> Services -> XBMAL. When you select XBMAL, you should see the addon information page. Select 'Configure'.

Now you just need to configure your settings. Set your MAL username and password in the appropriate boxes.

Settings configured? Ok. Go to the addons screen (whereever all of your installed addons are listed, this varies from skin to skin), and select XBMAL. It's the one with the big, blue, "MyAnimeList" icon. Once you select it, it will go through your entire XBMC TV show library and try to guess the appropriate MAL mapping. This will take a while, particularly with a large library, so now is a good time to go grab a sandwich.

Have you eaten your sandwich? Ok. You should now see a list of items that looks similar to the following:

XBMC show S1 -> MAL Show
XBMC show S2 -> MAL Show
XBMC show S1 -> Could not find mapping on MAL.
Save above selections

Except it will have your shows instead of the generic strings I used above. Now you have to go through each show listed and be sure that the mapping it guessed is correct. About half of the time, it probably will be, but there are a few that will almost certainly be wrong. Most notably, almost everything with multiple seasons (denoted by S) will not have the correct mapping.

To fix a mapping, select the show you want to fix. A new menu should show up with all of the search results from MAL for the particular show. If you see the correct one, simply select it and the mapping will update. If you do not, you can select None of the above, which will mark it to be skipped and not updated during MAL udpates, or you can select Manual Search, where you enter your own MAL search for the show.

Once you have everything mapped, simply select the last item in the full list, labeled Save above selections. This will write your mappings to it's configuration file.

Ok, so the configuration file is written. Now you just need to watch a video. Whenever a video stops playing (it reaches the end or the user hits stop), the script will run and update your watching, completed, and plan to watch lists appropriately.

If you add a show to XBMC, you will need to re-run the setup script. However, the setup script will read your previous mappings, so you should only need to update the newest items, which are typically at the bottom of the list. It will also run much faster, as it won't look up all of your shows again. It will only look up the ones it has no clue about.

Questions, Comments, Concerns, Issues

If you have any of these, you can submit an issue or you can stop by the xbmc thread for xbmal, or you can even check out the myanimelist thread for xbmal. I look forward to hearing from you!

TODO

• Make the list look nicer, like this.
• Support mapping multiple seasons into a single show, i.e. Naruto or Eureka Seven Done in PR #18! Thanks iraturus.
• When item is removed from XBMC library, remove from XML file (perhaps try to check with library cleaned?)
• Invert the list so that newest items are on top
• Make the setup script smarter when guessing mappings
  • Ignore anything with 'special', 'extras', etc. in the name
  • Guess seasons appropriately, i.e., season 2 looks for '2', 'II', etc., season 3 looks for '3', 'III', etc.
  • If above fails, search for additional punctuation. Silly japan and punctuation. (See Ika Musume for an example)
  • If all of the above fails, then default to first season title.
• Support videos along with tv shows
• Maybe, if we're really really lucky, and work on this really hard, get in the official repository?