orchi-ia / mittsu

Anime/Manga recommendation terminal application using the Jikan API.

Mittsu

Japanese:

三つ 【みっつ】

number, noun

• meaning: three (3).
• also written as: 3つ.

Mittsu is a console application app that uses the Jikan API[1] to recommend anime/manga to users based on up to 3 anime/manga they know and love.

For this project the Jikan API was used for recommendation purposes, however its capabilities extend to receiving data on anime/manga characters, clubs, producers, reviews and seasons among other categories.

This API does not require an API key.

Features

• Receives up to 3 anime from a user and returns 5 recommendations (per anime input) for other anime they might enjoy in file format.

• Receives up to 3 manga from a user and returns 5 recommendations (per manga input) for other manga they might enjoy in file format.

Dependencies

This application requires the time[2], sys[3], random[4], requests[5] and jikanpy v4[6] Python modules. All dependencies can be installed into a Python environment using the Anaconda platform (conda) and/or from PyPi (via pip) according to:

conda install <module>

or

pip install <module>

More on the modules used

The time module provides numerous functions that allow the programmer to perform time-related tasks. This module was helpful to stagger the information shown to the user and to avoid rate limit errors from the API.

The sys module allowed for the interaction with the interpreter. This module was used to flush the output and to avoid moving to a new line in the loader() and typewriter() functions.

The random module generates psuedo-random numbers which helped to limit the number of recommendations made to the user.

The requests module works in tandem with APIs as it allows for making calls to and receiving data from an API that can be reformatted using .json()[7].

The jikanpy v4 module is a Python wrapper (code to modify/extend the capabilities of an existing function) for the Jikan API. This was used to search for anime/manga by name (and return its My Anime List (MAL)[8] ID) according to the user input as the Jikan API returns information based on a MAL ID.

Instructions

To use this app, clone the Mittsu repository onto your desktop using the GitHub Desktop application or using the git clone command:

git clone https://github.com/orchi-ia/Mittsu.git

Navigate into the Mittsu /scripts folder within your terminal and run the app.py file with the python command, for example:

python app.py

or

python3 app.py

• Note: If running the app from the global terminal, ensure you have Python installed in the global environment. Otherwise, run Mittsu from the terminal of a virtual Python environment.

References

1. https://docs.api.jikan.moe
2. https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html
3. https://docs.python.org/3/library/sys.html
4. https://docs.python.org/3/library/random.html
5. https://requests.readthedocs.io
6. https://jikanpy.readthedocs.io
7. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript/Objects/JSON#
8. https://myanimelist.net