lockedAniList Apps

AniSync: AniList+MAL Synchronizer and Exporter

cor · 10y

12881

AniSync is live! It allows you to use AniList while keeping MyAnimeList up to date.
When you make any new changes to your AniList, the system will automatically synchronize those changes on MAL without you needing to do anything.

http://cory.pw/anisync

Note that at this time, AniSync will not copy over your entire existing list to MAL by itself-- it only synchronizes recent changes to your AniList. So be sure to export your AniList first, and then re-import it to MAL so that they're initially synced up.

And here's how you can export your AniList to MAL .xml format:
http://cory.pw/export
It may take several minutes so be patient. (there's a progress meter thingy, though, so you'll know if it's working). This feature is also very new, so I can't guarantee that all of your shows will be copied over correctly.

Supported Sync Activities

Watched new episodes
Completed show
Show added to plan to watch
Show dropped
Show on hold

Original post:
After trying out this site, I realize that I like it a lot better than MyAnimeList, but I'd still like to keep my MAL account up to date. I can have a backup of my lists, as well as having a MAL list to share with my IRL friends (who all use MAL).

So I made a script to keep track of my latest activity from Anilist, and then automatically synchronize it over on MAL.

Since I just started on this today, it's pretty barebones. However, it can still successfully update episode counts, so it's a working proof of concept.

Even though it's not finished, I figured I'd post this thread since I have a few questions--

First, is there already anything like this out there? I didn't see any, but I wanna confirm to make sure I'm not wasting my time.

Next, an interesting problem is trying to update the correct show on MAL. This is because Anilist and MAL use different ID's for shows, so I have to "convert" between the two sites.
Currently I do this by sending the full title of the show to http://myanimelist.net/search/all, and then grabbing the ID of the first result. It's worked so far I guess, but it's kind of a sketchy way of doing it. Anyone have any better ideas?

Finally, is there anyone else who'd be interested in using this system? I could just run this script on my computer just for myself, but if anyone would like, I might put up a little website to link other people's accounts to it.

So if I go through with finishing this project, it would probably be able to mirror whatever activity appears on your feed, as well as keeping show ratings up to date. Also, since I know one of the mods stated that MAL format export isn't gonna happen, I might try to do that myself, as a part of this project.

Taluun 10y
It only does currently airing shows (at least to me knowledge) but Tsuiseki does something similar.

http://tsuiseki.moe/watching
chriskin 10y
I would definitely like to see something like this working, especially if it includes manga as well.

It can help with any testing you might want and if you are still working on it around a month from now I would have enough free time to help with code as well
- cor 10y
  Cool, it would be neat to have someone to help out. I'll put it up on GitHub sometime soon.
Yobi 10y
something which let me update my MAL list will be good. I <3 Anilist, but still i want to keep my MAL active and up to date :>
Oujii 10y
I would definitely use a system like that. I'm a MAL user since 2011 and just this week I started testing AniList and HB, I'm even installing Shinjimaru and Atarashii for a proper experience. Anyway, I'd like to keep both lists updated until I decide which site I'm gonna stick with.
cor 10y
Alrighty then, I've started turning this into a website. I figured I'd use this as an opportunity for me to learn Ruby on Rails.

Source code will be kept here: https://github.com/cory2067/anisync
Here's what the site looks like in its ugly, primitive form.
Once you link your account, the site will automatically update MAL until you unlink your account.

Will update when I'm ready to invite users to try it.
- Oujii 10y
  Thank you very much for putting your effort into it. I'm looking forward to the first release!
cranbarrier 10y
Yes! I asked about this on the help forum before. I'm very interested in this.
nijuu 10y
I hope this actually becomes a thing :)
Exenth 10y
i was searching for something like this, i love anilist, but it would still be nice to keep MAL up to date without adding the shows manually. Hope you get the first release out soon :D
cor 10y
I think I'm ready to make it public for testing (keyword: testing; it might stop working at any time). Right now, I have the program successfully running for my account. At its current state, it updates new episodes watched, keeps track of when you add new shows to the list, and tracks when your shows change state (e.g. from watching -> dropped). It will not, however, import your entire list-- only recent changes. Though you can expect a full export to MAL format to be added eventually.

Also, don't expect an immediate update on MAL. It only updates periodically, as you can see. However, if 30 minutes elapses and there are no changes on MAL, something might be wrong, so please let me know.

Notes about account security: the box says the app is requesting permission to "edit, create or remove your AniList data," but in reality, I just use the API to examine your activity every once in a while-- your Anillist will not be modified. Nor is your Anilist password stored/seen by my server in any way; the API does a nice job with security.
For your MAL, on the other hand, your username/password is stored in a database on my server in order for the automated system to update your list. I won't be looking at your passwords or anything myself, but I just wanted to be transparent about what's going on.

Also when you log in, currently there are no checks to ensure that you typed in your login info correctly, so please be careful that you get it right. If the authentication fails, it'll probably crash and stop updating everyone else.

Here it is:
http://cory.pw/anisync
Oujii 10y
I linked my account. I'm currently rewatching Higurashi and I will probably start one for Evangelion, let's see how it plays out.

Thank you again!
cor 10y
Day one of alpha testing:

While looking through Oujii's activity, when the program hit [orange -> plan to watch], it crashed and aborted sync for the rest of the users. That was an error on my part; I have the program search MAL for the show and determine its ID, but it ended up grabbing the ID of the manga instead of the anime, so it aborted. Fixed that issue and @Oujii should now be updating correctly (for now).

@nijuu failed updating completely:

MAL couldn't authenticate, so I'm going to assume that you entered your password incorrectly or something. I've unlinked your account for now, so you can try to re-signup and make sure you enter everything correctly.

Secondary error is that it thought the GUP OVA was the same as GUP film (note they have the same ID in the screenshot) -- that's because myanimelist calls the OVA by some different name. Since it didn't find anything called GUP OVA, it picked the closest thing it saw: the film. I've overrode it to the correct ID myself.
- nijuu 10y
  Ah, sorry for providing the wrong password. I guess it was wrong in my password manager. Anyway, I relinked with the right password so hopefully it'll work? :)
  cor 10y
  Yup, all good now. Your MAL should reflect your anilist changes from the past couple days.
  nijuu 10y
  It does it does! Good work on this! Keep it up, it's great :)
- Oujii 10y
  Oh yea, I totally forgot about my PTW list. I updated it on Anilist some days ago with the shows that will air for the next season, I didn't new it was gonna sync anyway. But yeah, at least my PTW is synced for now. Funnily enough, I started rewatching Higurashi on Wednesday and because Anilist doesn't have a native "Currently rewatching" status, it synced to my MAL as my first watch. Anyway, I'm glad it's working. Keep it going, it's awesome! Thank you!
cor 10y
AniSync Alpha: Day 1
Server Explosion #3

Seriously tho, how does one even create a status like this?

A show was marked as completed.... but wait, where's the show?

So some code was added to ignore shows that..... don't exist lol
All 5 users now updating correctly.
- Exenth 10y
  I seriously have no clue, can't delete it or anything, it is stuck there for months.
  
  Also i know it's not really important but how hard would it be to update the score of a show?
  
  And thanks for the hard work, really like what you are doing here.
ZigfridTrinisete 10y
Interesting. I have two inactive MAL accounts, so if you want I can let you have one for test purposes. Also, I can run the other if you want to test some manga updates. I rarely see anime.
- cor 10y
  Cool, I'll probably add manga syncing eventually, once the anime features are finished and stable.
cor 10y
It's live!

Exporting your list to MAL format! I did a little bit of testing and it worked fine for me.
However, since I just finished it, you might wanna take caution in using it-- I can't guarantee it'll pick up everything on your list correctly.
That being said, feel free to try it out:

http://cory.pw/export
Also, prepare to wait a bit. It has to search on MAL for all the shows it doesn't know, so it may take several minutes. But as long as the page is open, you can monitor the progress.
And once you export the first time, the system will have learned what your shows are, and the next export will be much faster. (It'll also make exporting faster for other users with the same shows)
- nijuu 10y
  Wow, great job again! Suggestion though, you should round up scores rather than rounding (or truncating) since anything with a score of 0 is assumed to be unscored even if in the /100 system it's scored just as <10
  cor 10y
  In my own MAL, I've always rounded things (I consider 95+ to be a 10/10), but you bring up a good point.
  I just changed it so that it rounds up, but I think at some point I'll add a dropdown selection box to choose a preferred rounding method.
chriskin 10y
I've been trying to test the export but more than an hour after I started it still says

Export to .xml

Account succesfully authenticated. Exporting, this may take a while.

Titles finished: 0

Should I just leave it running, should I try a different browser (I am on chrome) or is something not working in general?
- cor 10y
  If it's taking that long, then it probably means the program crashed. This is something I wrote quickly and didn't do much testing on, so I'm not surprised there are bugs. (So the issue is my fault, not yours)
  
  I'll look into it later tonight.
- cor 10y
  Alright, I got it to work @chriskin. You can run exporter again and it should work fine. Or you can just download it right here; I already ran the script on your account: http://cory.pw/assets/chriskin.xml
  
  The problem was there was some show on your AniList (I think it was called Brave Witches or something) where "list_status" was just empty. Usually it say "completed," "plan-to-watch," etc., but this one was just blank, so the program didn't know what to do with it, and just crashed.
  Weird, not sure why that is.
  
  Whatever the case, I just added a piece of code to ignore anomalies like that, so now it's running fine.
  chriskin 10y
  Huh, that should have been "dropped" I think.
  
  Oh well, let's try it out now :D Thanks for checking it out
  chriskin 10y
  Myanimelist apparently refuses to update stuff if they are already in a part of the list. For example I had Akame ga Kill on watching there and completed in my anilist and it didn't update it. Is there any way to just clear the myanimelist profile completely so I can try again?
  
  By the way it said that it added 952 titles correctly (out of 953 that I have in my anilist) but it only shows 900 in myanimelist, included some plan to watch that I had there and I have removed for quite some time now.
  cor 10y
  What do you mean by only 900? When I look at your list, I see a total of 1001 entries.
  chriskin 10y
  Oh, the stats for myanimelist don't update as fast as I expected, I saw on my profile there where it shows 900 entries and thought that it would be correct. I didn't check the actual list to be sure, I only thought of doing so when I saw your testing profile that showed 0 anime at the stats.
  
  Now I saw 1001 which is weird but it's probably caused by the plan to watch not being removed before the new ones are added (since I no longer use a plan to watch list on anilist)
  
  Is there any way for me to simply remove the plan to watch list or just clear my list once to fill it only with correct titles?
  cor 10y
  Looks like it did something weird with akame ga kill @chriskin. The exporter works by searching for the show on MAL and then adding it. But when you search for akame ga kill, for some nonsense reason, the first result is some specials or something, and not the actual show.
  
  (So those specials probably showed up in your myanimelist now.)
  I've overridden the program to use the correct show now instead of those specials in the future.
- cor 10y
  So I tried importing your exported list into one of my empty test accounts:
  
  http://myanimelist.net/animelist/testcor2
  
  There are 941 titles showing up there, out of the 952. I guess the remaining 1% failed to export properly (perhaps the program couldn't find the corresponding show on MyAnimeList for those ones).
  
  The issue with Akame ga Kill is also now fixed; that shows up as completed now.
  
  I'll try to figure out which 11 shows didn't transfer over.
  chriskin 10y
  If it can be done manually I can try searching what anime haven't been transferred as well.
  
  I'll try to find a way to clean my list first to be sure that there aren't other anime in it (since it seems that if something is already in before importing it stays there, my plan to watch stuff are still in the myanimelist profile for example even though I don't have them after I moved to anilist) and once I do that I'll start looking for differences between the two lists
  cor 10y
  I was looking at the list, and it looks like most of the ones it missed were like 1 episode specials and whatnot. For example, when it saw Mushishi Zoku Shou Specials, it mistook that for Mushishi Zoku Shou.
  Occasionally it'll also miss sequels. For example, it mistakenly links Haikyuu!! 2 on AniList to just Haikyuu!! on MAL. This is because MAL calls S2 by a different name (Haikyuu!! Second Season instead of Haikyuu!! 2), so the mapping failed.
  
  I made some changes so that kind of thing should happen less often, though there are still a few (I count 4) missed titles on the export. I'll go back and correct those tomorrow.
  cor 10y
  I went back and made some fixes.
  
  There's still a problem with PSYCHO-PASS Shin Henshuu-ban. This is simply because it doesn't exist on MyAnimeList. I found in some thread that it was denied from the database or something, for whatever reason.
  
  I think it should be fine aside from that, (though I could have missed a couple).
  chriskin 10y
  Thanks, I'll have check it tomorrow though because I'm currently swamped in some work.
  
  By the way, will you make a manga part of the tool as well?
Esth 10y
Hi, I'm currently trying to export my Anilist's anilist in .xml but it doesn't even take 20% (That's an understatement) of my completed shows, do you have a solution ? Am I just dumb and the answer is obvious ? Do I need to wait until you solve this (known) problem ?
- cor 10y
  Ok, I see why it's not working.
  It was only grabbing your shows from the list explicitly titled "Completed," which only has 92 entries in it, and I forgot to add some code to check custom lists.
  
  I just modified the program to look at custom lists, and now it sees 588 completed shows. Should work now.
  Esth 10y
  Thanks, that aside and even if it's not perfect, I love your job. Keep up the good work !
cor 10y
@Estoria and @fiji98: If you noticed that AniSync wasn't working for you, I just fixed it. One of the previous users messed up the registration, so the sync tool crashed before getting to your accounts. (todo for this weekend: make error handling not suck)

All users should be working fine now.
Snni 9y
Jesus, I love you.
cor 9y
To whoever signed up for AniSync under the name "CamilaMS," that username doesn't seem to exist on AniList.
I'm gonna unlink your account for now, and you can try again if you want.
chriskin 9y
I have an issue, I cleaned my list completely with Taiga and then I imported my stuff from the export but it imported them incorrectly.

For example it says that I have dropped Mushishi, it shows the score I gave it but it shows that I dropped it and that I haven't watched a single episode of it (in my anilist I have it completed with all episodes watched).

It also says that I completed (with 0 episodes watched) Sasami-san@Ganbaranai even though I don't even have it in my list at all.

Is there any way to see what anime it is going to import before it actually does so I can check if the data is correct?

my MAL is here if you want to check it : http://myanimelist.net/profile/chriskin

It's also possible that it was caused by anisync, both bugs happened exactly after I put my name on Anisync but they didn't appear in the history at the right side of MAL before I did so.

In case they disappear because of newer updates, here they are on my history : http://i.imgur.com/KpIFY2Q.png

Another edit : Now anisync synced my completion of Flying Witch and it put it at 0 episodes watched as well (before anisync updated it myanimelist had it at 8 episodes watched or some number like that)

lol it also put an anime called "Hand Shakers" in my list that I haven't even heard of. I think my MAL is haunted now :D
- cor 9y
  Just found a weird bug that sets show episode counts to zero when they are completed/dropped/placed on-hold. Will fix that later today. Anyways, it looks like MAL automatically sets progress count to maximum when a show is completed (e.g. flying witch says progress 12 in your list, even though the update feed says -/12).
  
  The Sasami-san thing was added when you marked Ganbaru Hito wo Ooen suru Hito as completed. And that's a manga. So that's a bug: AniSync tries to make anime updates when manga are marked as completed. Will fix that later today.
  
  The Hand Shakers thing was caused by Shake-chan in your list. I guess Shake-chan is such an obscure ONA that it wasn't able to find the corresponding entry on MAL. I don't think it exists at all on MAL, actually. So therefore, it just picked the closest thing it could find (Hand Shakers).
  
  Looks like the Mushishi thing was triggered when you dropped the manga Cider to Nakimushi. I guess the manga bug applies to dropped manga as well. Again, will fix later today.
  chriskin 9y
  The important part of this is that you seem to not have watched Shake-chan. Please do, it's definitely worth it :D
  
  Seriously though, thanks for all the help
Genomu 9y
After trying it out I noticed that it put Ushio to Tora instead of Ushio to Tora 2. I don't know if it's only for this anime or other too, but I'll check the whole list now to make sure.

EDIT: It misplaced few anime, some finished were in plan to watch and some in ptw were in watching, but nothing to big of a problem to fix manually. Great API to save you some time!
- cor 9y
  Yeah, it sometimes mixes shows up when shows on MAL have slightly different titles than those on AniList. For example, on MAL, Ushio to Tora 2 is called Ushio to Tora (TV) 2nd Season. So the difference in wording there caused it to mess up.
  (I just manually corrected that, so it shouldn't make the same mistake again)
RadicalM1nd 9y
I'm also trying it out now. Thanks for the effort, will be an awesome feature once it works out as planned!
Zageron 9y
Tried it out, seems to work pretty well for Anime. As far as I can tell manga is not functional at all. Browsing the thread it seems like it is now being worked on, so am I experiencing a bug or is it not enabled for everyone yet?

Thanks so much for this feature, many of my friends refuse to move from MAL to Anilist.
- cor 9y
  Yep, I haven't added manga support yet. I might try to get it running in the next week or so if I have time.
  chriskin 9y
  Could I ask if you are still working on manga support? I was planning to add my stuff on myanimelist as well and I'd like to avoid manually putting all of them in there
  cor 9y
  I've been away out of the country for the past few weeks, so I haven't had a chance to do any work on this. It may get done before the fall, but no promises
cor 9y
Sync is currently dead for the following users:
I think it's some authentication error on MAL. The most obvious cause would be that somebody changed their password, but that's obviously unlikely if it's happening to three people.

I'll investigate more tomorrow (as it's 3 AM now), but if any of you guys know what could have happened, let me know.
- Sapphire9999 9y
  I'll try to re-add myself (I may have miss-typed my password)
  cor 9y
  Cool, yours seems to work now.
Zageron 9y
Hmm, any chance of adding a "Times re-watched" sync? :)
This would be a great project to make open source if/when AniList goes open source.
- cor 9y
  I'm planning on eventually syncing more aspects (like notes and scores), so I'll add rewatches to the todo list.
  
  And this already is open source!
  https://github.com/cory2067/anisync
nijuu 9y
With anisync is it a planned feature to have it check for a rating after it retrieves the 'Anime completed' status?
- cor 9y
  It'll probadly do something like that.
  Since my scores kind of change over time, it could also do something more complicated like go through your entire list every day or so and update all the scores that need to be changed.
  nijuu 9y
  Ya, I was thinking that but figured that'd be a pretty big load on the server since some people have over 1000 shows and all.
Exenth 9y
The export to .xml doesn't work for me i gets stuck at 109, maybe something to do with my empty entry
zGustavo 9y
Hello Cor, I unlinked my account, however I can not get my authorization pin :(
- cor 9y
  I think the new anilist update broke AniSync. I've been really behind on developing this, but I'll at least try to get it back and working today or tomorrow.
- cor 9y
  Ok, I think everything is up and running again!
theenky 9y
hey first time stumbled at this!

anyway, when i try to export my list to xml, nothing happen when exporting it, there is no any progress bar too

this seems really cool, i hope i can use it :)))
- cor 9y
  Ah, when I applied the fixes for the main Anisync, I forgot to add fixes for the export feature. I'll look into it and let you know when it's working again.
  theenky 9y
  thanks!
  Horohoro 9y
  Hey, any update on that yet? I would like to use this.
zGustavo 9y
Thanks Cor, everything is working again.

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