Media DB Plugin

Obsidian Media DB Plugin

A plugin that can query multiple APIs for movies, series, anime, manga, books, comics, games, music, and wiki articles, and import them into your vault.

[!WARNING] Please make sure you are looking at the README on the release branch. The README on the master branch refers to the current in-development version of the plugin.

Features

Search by Title

Search for movies, series, anime, manga, books, comics, games, music releases, or wiki articles by their name across multiple APIs.

Search by ID

Allows you to search by an ID that varies from API to API. Concrete information on this feature can be found in the description of the individual APIs.

Templates

The plugin allows you to set a template note that gets added to the end of any note created by this plugin.
The plugin also offers simple template tags, for example {{ title }}, which will be replaced by the title of the media being imported.
Note that template tags are surrounded by two curly braces and spaces. The spaces inside the curly braces are important!

For arrays, there are two special ways of displaying them:

• using {{ LIST:variable_name }} will result in:

    - element 1
    - element 2
    - element 3
    - ...
  

• using {{ ENUM:variable_name }} will result in:

    element 1, element 2, element 3, ...
  

Available variables that can be used in template tags are any front-matter properties.

I also published my own templates here.

Download poster images

The plugin offers a setting to automatically download the poster images for a new media, ensuring offline access. The images are saved as type_title (year) e.g. movie_The Perfect Storm (2000), in a user-chosen folder.

Metadata field customization

Allows you to rename the metadata fields this plugin generates through mappings. The mappings can be set in the plugin's settings. The three options for mapping are:

• default: Keep the original name
• remap: Rename the property
• remove: Removes the property entirely

Bulk Import

The plugin allows you to import your preexisting media collection and upgrade it to Media DB entries.

Prerequisites

The preexisting media notes must be inside a folder in your vault. For the plugin to be able to query them, they need one metadata field that is used as the title the piece of media is searched by. This can be achieved by, for example, using a csv import plugin to import an existing list from outside of Obsidian.

Importing

To start the import process, right-click on the folder and select the Import folder as Media DB entries option. Then specify the API to search, if the current note content and metadata should be appended to the Media DB entry, and the name of the metadata field that contains the title of the piece of media.

Then the plugin will go through every file in the folder and prompt you to select from the search results.

Post import

After all files have been imported or the import was canceled, you will find the new entries as well as an error report that contains any errors or skipped/canceled files in the folder specified in the setting of the plugin.

How to install

The plugin is now released, so it can be installed directly through Obsidian's plugin installer.

Alternatively, you can manually download the zip archive from the latest release here on GitHub.
After downloading, extract the archive into the .obsidian/plugins folder in your vault.

The folder structure should look like this:

[path to your vault]
|_ .obsidian
   |_ plugins
      |_ obsidian-media-db-plugin
         |_ main.js
         |_ manifest.json
         |_ styles.css

How to use

Once you have installed this plugin, you will find a database icon in the left ribbon.
When using this or the Add new Media DB entry command, a pop-up will open.
Here, you can enter the title of what you want to search for and then select which APIs to search.

After clicking search, a new pop-up will open, prompting you to select from the search results.
Now you select the result you want, and the plugin will cast its magic, creating a new note in your vault that contains the metadata of the selected search result.

Currently supported media types

• movies (including specials)
• series (including OVAs)
• videogames
• boardgames
• music releases
• wiki articles
• books
• manga
• comics

Currently supported APIs:

Notes

• Jikan
  • sometimes the api is very slow; this is normal
  • you need to use the title the anime has on My Anime List, which is in most cases the Japanese title
    • e.g. instead of "Demon Slayer" you have to search "Kimetsu no Yaiba"
• Support for the Moby Games API has been removed from the plugins as the API is no longer free to use.
• Support for the Giant Bomb API has been removed from the plugin temporarily as their API is currently non functional.

Search by ID

• Jikan
  • the ID you need is the ID of the anime on My Anime List
  • you can find this ID in the URL
    • e.g. for "Beyond the Boundary" the URL looks like this https://myanimelist.net/anime/18153/Kyoukai_no_Kanata so the ID is 18153
• Jikan Manga
  • the ID you need is the ID of the manga on My Anime List
  • you can find this ID in the URL
    • e.g. for "All You Need Is Kill" the URL looks like this https://myanimelist.net/manga/62887/All_You_Need_Is_Kill so the ID is 62887
• OMDb
  • the ID you need is the ID of the movie or show on IMDb
  • you can find this ID in the URL
    • e.g. for "Rogue One" the URL looks like this https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3748528/ so the ID is tt3748528
• TMDB
  • the ID you need is the numeric value in the URL directly following /movie/ or /tv/
    • e.g. for "Stargate" the URL looks like this https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/2164-stargate so the ID is 2164
  • When searching by ID you need to select TMDBSeriesAPI, TMDBSeasonAPI, or TMDBMovieAPI for series, seasons, and movies respectively.
  • Season ID searches use the format <series_id>/season/<season_number> - season 1 of The Expanse expects 63639/season/1
• MusicBrainz
  • the id of a release is not easily accessible; you are better off just searching by title
  • the search is generally for albums but you can have a more granular search like so:
    • search for albums by a specific artist:"Lady Gaga" AND primarytype:"album"
    • search for a specific album by a specific artist artist:"Lady Gaga" AND primarytype:"album" AND releasegroup:"The Fame"
    • search for a specific entry (song or album) by a specific artist:"Lady Gaga" AND releasegroup:"Poker face"
• Wikipedia
  • here is a guide to finding the Wikipedia ID for an article
• Steam
  • you can find this ID in the URL
    • e.g. for "Factorio" the URL looks like this https://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/Factorio/ so the ID is 427520
• Open Library
  • The ID can either be the "/work/" ID, the "/book/" ID, or the "/isbn/" ID it needs to start with /works/. You can find this ID in the URL
    • e.g. for "Fantastic Mr. Fox" the "/works/" URL looks like this https://openlibrary.org/works/OL45804W so the ID is /works/OL45804W
      • This URL is located near the top of the page above the title, see An edition of Fantastic Mr Fox (1970)
    • For a specific edition of "Fantastic Mr. Fox" the "/books/" URL looks like this https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3567303M/ so the ID is /books/OL3567303M
      • This URL is located in the editions section`
• Comic Vine
  • you can find this ID in the URL
    • e.g. for "Boule & Bill" the URL looks like this https://comicvine.gamespot.com/boule-bill/4050-70187/ so the ID is 4050-70187
    • Please note that only volumes can be added, not separate issues.
• VNDB
  • Located in the novel's VNDB URL path
    • e.g. The ID for Katawa Shoujo (https://vndb.org/v945) is v945

Problems, unexpected behavior, or improvement suggestions?

You are more than welcome to open an issue on GitHub.

Contributions

Thank you for wanting to contribute to this project.

Contributions are always welcome. If you have an idea, feel free to open a feature request under the issue tab or even create a pull request.

Credits

Credits go to:

• https://github.com/anpigon/obsidian-book-search-plugin for some inspiration and the idea to make this plugin