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Chikorita157's Anime Blog

Anime blog that focuses on Yuri and School Girl Slice of Life Anime and Editorials

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Editorial: Sad state of MyAnimeList and it's APIs

November 17, 2009 by Chikorita157 6 Comments

MyAnimeList is probably the most used site by most anime viewers and bloggers besides AniDB, melative, or Anime Planet to log all the watched anime and also manga, although not everyone read manga compared to Anime. However, I feel that MyAnimeList just like Facebook is cluttered and have too much going on and you have to log in just to update your list and most of the time, you forget to update that list. This is why there are programs like MAL Updater on Windows and MAL Client OS X on Mac OS X with a small number of other MAL Clients. However, MAL is not making it easy with developers to create these programs and I already have some trouble trying to figure out how to implement it.

The problem is that the MAL API is very incomplete. There is no documentation on how to obtain the list or even get the information of the Anime using the APIs. sliceoflifer made the Unofficial MAL API , which is the supposed replacement of the MAL API and also makes life easier since all the functions are there and you can easily implement the API. The problem is, there is no Manga support. With the Official MAL API, there is a severe lack of information on how to use the API and the lack of JSON support. Also, it’s buggy since in some instances, searching for titles like Kampfer does not even pop up any results due to the bad data spit out by the official MAL API.

MyAnimeList in my opinion is becoming too big and the developer APIs are left neglected for months and left to rot. MAL Updater is a closed sourced program and there is no native open source solution (No, AniChou does not count as native alternative) that would work natively on Windows or even a full Mac solution. The developer of MAL Updater have to resort largely with HTML scraping which is a pain in the neck to figure out and I commend him on his effort to do so… Why should developers be left having to do this time consuming process of making code to get rid of the HTML tags and convert it to XML? Does MAL want developers make more programs that would work with MAL and instant updating instead of resorting to the near-monopoly MAL Updater…

Another gripe is that their site is STILL not iPhone friendly or perhaps smartphone friendly… Most sites these days have iPhone versions of the website since the iPhone grew in popularity due to it’s powerful browser. iPhone friendly MAL would help since if some people watch anime on the TV and don’t have their laptop on or want to go to a computer just to update their status, they can do it easily on the iPhone. Why not jump on a iPhone solution for MAL, either a iPhone App or a iPhone friendly website… It shouldn’t be terribly hard to do since popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter already have one with their own iPhone apps.

Hopefully you take these suggestions seriously and help make MAL better, or I have to resort more with melative since it’s works alot better… (and why not join in on the fun).

If you see this text, this site has stolen my content. If you are affected by content thieves, look this domain up on a Whois Service, look up the IP and send a DMCA takedown with the host provider. STOP STEALING CONTENT AND MAKE YOUR OWN. Also,  MATRIXAT, go fuck yourself you fucking thief!

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Category: EditorialsTag: editorial, MyAnimeList, rant

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This post was handcrafted by…
Chikorita157 – who has written 3,610 posts.

Author and Owner of Chikorita157’s Anime Blog and Kireina Yuri. If you want to learn more about me, see the “About chikorita157” page.

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Reader Interactions

6 Comments… read them or add your own.

  1. kimaguresan :
    November 17, 2009 at 11:29 pm • Magical Level: 45

    Maybe the sad state is because MAL’s parent company doesn’t want folks using an API because of lost ad revenues. Once you’re owned by someone trying to make a profit, you can usually kiss most things that bypass ads goodbye.

    Reply
  2. chikorita157 :
    November 17, 2009 at 11:53 pm • Magical Level: 3346

    @kimaguresan that can be one possibility, but you can’t really participate on the forums, read others blogs and profiles and clubs without using the website which isn’t my goal of completely replacing the whole website with the client. The goal is to have a desktop updating client.

    I think whoever owns MAL is just plain lazy and don’t want to open up the API or fix the buggy search API… it’s just as bad as Microsoft with their Windows Mobile platform… The irony is that Facebook and Twitter have more API than MAL and MAL supposed to be a Facebook on Anime… but it’s lacking alot compared to Facebook since Facebook is alot open to developers and even have it’s iPhone version of the site and the app.

    Reply
  3. dood :
    November 18, 2009 at 3:17 am • Magical Level: 2

    MAL is useful for me because it helps me remember what was the last episode I have watched (and I follow about 15-20 series, most of them are current running series).
    I don’t really care for anything else.

    @kimaguresan:I use adblocker so no ads for me

    Reply
  4. kimaguresan :
    November 18, 2009 at 10:32 am • Magical Level: 45

    @admin: Maybe they just don’t want to be so open. Sad, but possible. I really think that not being open in this day and age will doom you at some point or another.

    @dood: So do I 😉

    Reply
  5. Ryan A :
    November 18, 2009 at 11:23 pm • Magical Level: 90

    Coly How. Mostly… I don’t really have an opinion on this sort of thing… because MAL is limited-media focus (anime/manga). But something is up… even AniDB has a wicked API that they’ve been sporting for years and years.

    Melative… doesn’t care about anime alone… it cares about the experience of media, whatever media that may be, which includes anime. I know this isn’t the typical mindset of a MAL user, but hopefully the notion that separating experience across a bunch of different apps doesn’t give a true representation of your tastes in the experience.

    Hmm, I should get back to that user compatibility query 🙂

    Reply
  6. chikorita157 :
    November 19, 2009 at 10:00 pm • Magical Level: 3346

    What I find funny is that AniDB that searches for your anime in your library works on Macs since it’s written in Java… I can’t see why MAL can write a single Java client or something so it will work on all OSes instead of being completely suck with the Windows only, closed source MAL Updater… Believe me, I am no fan of closed source software thats dealing with interfacing with web applications (unless they are really innovative and work on the same platform I use most) and there isn’t any good open source solution that have the same feature set as MAL Updater…

    MAL is just digging a big hole for itself for not opening up to developers. iPhone before the SDK came out was hindered by the fact that there is NO way to develop third party apps, but when the SDK came out, it became mad popular…. If MAL did the same thing, I wouldn’t have to use the shitty web interface for everything else.

    Reply

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