Made a minor change to the series types available by consolidating mini & maxi-series to the new Limited Series type. There isn't a real definite value for mini and maxi series, and really it makes more sense to not bother differentiating them. So, I've gone ahead and migrated the existing data for this change, and users should see this change. If you have any questions or thoughts, don't hesitate to contact me.
I've had a few users ask me how to run a local copy of the Grand Comics Database, so I figured I'd do a short write-up on how I do it.
I use Podman for containers instead of Docker, but the differences between them is fairly minimal and this should give you a good idea of how to do it. Anyway, let's get started!
First off, you'll want to download the most recent database dump from GCD which can be found here. Once it's finished downloading, unzip the file:
unzip current.zip -d /tmp/
You should see output similar to this:
Archive: current.zip
inflating: /tmp/2022-10-01.sql
Ok, now that we've got the data from gcd, let's create a MySQL container. We need to first pull a MySQL image, which can be done by running:
podman pull docker.io/library/mysql:5.7
After it's done downloading the image, you can confirm:
podman images
which should return output similar to this:
bpepple@frodo ~ $ podman images mysql
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
docker.io/library/mysql 5.7 eb175b0743cc 19 hours ago 448 MB
Now we need to create the container. You'll want to replace user and mysql credentials with your own values. The volume flag is where on your filesystem you want to save the database. The Z suffix is used for systems, primarily Red Hat-based, that use SELinux. If you don't use SELinux that can be dropped:
podman run -d --name mysql -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_USER=bpepple -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=123456 -e MYSQL_DATABASE=gcd -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=567890 --volume /home/bpepple/Storage/pods/mysql/:/var/lib/mysql:Z mysql:5.7
Now let's verify that the container was created and is running by using the following:
podman ps
You should see output similar to this:
bpepple@frodo ~ $ podman ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
400c957ae25d docker.io/library/mysql:5.7 mysqld 7 seconds ago Up 7 seconds ago 0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp mysql
Now we just need to dump the data from GCD into the database. We can do this by running:
cat /tmp/2022-10-01.sql | podman exec -i mysql /usr/bin/mysql -u root --password=567890 gcd
Depending on the specs of your machine, this might be a good time to grab some coffee, since the SQL dump is very large and will take awhile to finish. Once it's done, we can start using the database by attaching to the container:
podman exec -it mysql mysql -ubpepple -p gcd
This command will prompt you for your password, and then you'll see the MySQL prompt where you can run a simple SQL statement like so:
DESCRIBE gcd_issue;
Which should produce output similar to this:
+----------------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| number | varchar(50) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| volume | varchar(50) | NO | MUL | | |
| no_volume | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| display_volume_with_number | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| series_id | int(11) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| indicia_publisher_id | int(11) | YES | MUL | NULL | |
| indicia_pub_not_printed | tinyint(1) | NO | | NULL | |
| brand_id | int(11) | YES | MUL | NULL | |
| no_brand | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| publication_date | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| key_date | varchar(10) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| sort_code | int(11) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| price | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| page_count | decimal(10,3) | YES | | NULL | |
| page_count_uncertain | tinyint(1) | NO | | 0 | |
| indicia_frequency | varchar(255) | NO | | | |
| no_indicia_frequency | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| editing | longtext | NO | | NULL | |
| no_editing | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| notes | longtext | NO | | NULL | |
| created | datetime | NO | | 1901-01-01 00:00:00 | |
| modified | datetime | NO | MUL | 1901-01-01 00:00:00 | |
| deleted | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| is_indexed | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| isbn | varchar(32) | NO | MUL | | |
| valid_isbn | varchar(13) | NO | MUL | | |
| no_isbn | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| variant_of_id | int(11) | YES | MUL | NULL | |
| variant_name | varchar(255) | NO | | | |
| barcode | varchar(38) | NO | MUL | | |
| no_barcode | tinyint(1) | NO | | 0 | |
| title | varchar(255) | NO | MUL | | |
| no_title | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| on_sale_date | varchar(10) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| on_sale_date_uncertain | tinyint(1) | NO | | 0 | |
| rating | varchar(255) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| no_rating | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| volume_not_printed | tinyint(1) | NO | | NULL | |
| no_indicia_printer | tinyint(1) | NO | | NULL | |
+----------------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
40 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Great, we've got the database up and running! To logout from the container just type:
\q
To stop the container, you would just use the following:
podman stop mysql
And that's it! Podman has tons of niceties (like auto-updating images, using systemd for container start-ups, etc.) and I'd encourage you to read up on using some its many features. If it get some free time, I'll do a follow-up article about using Python to query the database and using that data for things like writing metadata to comic archives.
Did a quick release this morning of the python wrapper for the Marvel API, Esak, which adds an option to have the cache results expire after a user-defined number of days. To update to the latest version just run the following command:
pip3 install -U --user esak
Did a quick release today of Darkseid that fixes a bug which prevented exporting rar (.cbr) comics to zip files (.cbz). If you use Metron-Tagger and export rar files, it would be worthwhile to update Darkseid which can be done with the following command:
pip3 install -U --user darkseid
As always if you run into any problems, don't hesitate to contact us on Matrix.
A user contacted me about adding Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men series to Metron since we have recently added support for trade paperbacks/collected editions. I figured this would be useful exercise since it would show me what parts of the process could be improved to make it easier.
Currently, the process requires the editor to add all creators, characters, teams, etc. manually for the reprinted issues associate with the collection, much like a regular issue. One obvious way to simplify this is to automatically add any characters, team, story titles, etc. for the issues being reprinted. Currently, I've written an admin action to do this, but sometime in the future I need to expose this functionality so that anyone adding a Trade Paperback/Collection can save some time.
When I was creating Metron one of the choices I made was to add creators at an issue-level, and not at a story-level, since I wanted the process for adding an issue to be fairly simple. The downside to this approach is that adding information to a collection from an issue with multiple stories isn't really possible.😢
The Metron Project reached a milestone today by having 50,000 issues added to its database. I wish to give big thanks to everyone who has helped with the project. Thanks!
So, one of the new projects I've been working on in my spare time is a new comic book xml schema called MetronInfo.
Currently, most applications use ComicInfo which originated from the ComicRack application, but due to it's history this format has some limitations like:
For now, the Anansi Project is working on documenting and extending (non-breaking changes) the ComicInfo schema, but in my opinion that time spent would be better spent on creating a new format not tied to a dead application. Due to the fairly unstructured nature of comic book archives it's trivial to tag one with the existing ComicInfo format and also a new format. That way users who use applications that only support ComicInfo.xml can still use them, but also gives them the option to use applications that could support the MetronInfo format.
My goals for MetronInfo.xml are:
Currently I'm working right now on finalizing the new format, and would appreciate any help or feedback from the comic book community in this. Feel free to leave suggestions either at the Discussions Page or contact use over on Matrix.
Once the new format is finalized I plan on writing a tool that will create a MetronInfo.xml file for any existing comic book archive that was tagged with ComicTagger or Metron-Tagger, and also retrieve any missing data from the source of information (Metron or Comic Vine).
Welcome to the Metron Project! We'll be using this site to add some documentation and information about new project initiatives here. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us on Matrix.