Naming convention / File Structure
Metadata
Scanning files
It's important to know how kavita parses the info from the files.
Kavita uses parsing (not folder structure) to determine what is a series and what belongs to each series. Due to this, you are not required to put all of one series in the same folder, however it is good practice.
Folder and File Structure TOC:
For all types of libraries, Kavita has an override for treating files as Specials.
To force a Special status, the filename can use SP01, SP02 etc.
/libraryroot/Series Name/Series Name SP01.cbz
/libraryroot/Series Name/Specials/Series Name SP01 Special Name.cbzThis will take the file and force it to be a special. For it to identify as a special and not as the series from the filename, it will look up towards the library root and attempt to parse the series name from the folder names.
For example: /libraryroot/Again!!/Specials/Again The After Story SP01.cbz
will parse "Again!!" for the Series name and group the file as a special under Again!!
Kavita uses metadata to parse Series Name, Volumes, Chapters... Kavita reads metadata from within your archives (cbz, cbr, c7, cbt) and epub files. If your archives contain metadata, it will override any parsed information from the file.
Comics and manga uses a ".xml" file at the root of the cbz, cbr, cbt, cb7 files
This file must be named ComicInfo.xml and be at the root of the archive.
The xml schema of this file can be found in the Anansi Project webpage. We support v2.1 (draft).
You can find multiple tools to add metadata under Misc section
Age rating may vary between different files within a series. The Series will take the highest Age Rating (aka most mature) and use it from the files contained within. So for example, say you have:
In order for a Series to give a publication status, if you have at least one "Count" defined within any ComicInfo from the series and it is not 0, then Kavita will assume the Series is Completed. Otherwise, it will be assumed Ongoing. Ideally the value of this field should be the total number of volumes (manga) or issues (comics)
Likewise with Age Rating, Release Year is a summation of the minimum year defined within a series that is at least 4 units long (> 1000).
EPUB files do not have a ComicInfo.xml, but they do have some limited metadata in the OPF file. Kavita tries to map as much of this information as possible.
The tags that Kavita parses are:
Scanning a library makes Kavita check its folders and sub-folders for new or removed items (books, archive files, etc). If new media is found, it then pulls it into the library.
You can think of scanning as “check for new or changed content”.
Important:
- First scans are often slow, especially on networked storage. Be patient
- The Kavita Homepage and Library info, will be updated throughout the scan in chunks of 50 series at a time.
Note: Kavita performs a first-time scan on new created libraries
Kavita will generate a library representation of your files on disk. A Kavita library does not represent exactly your folder structure. Kavita uses filenames and some limited folder names to parse out the series, volume, chapter, etc from the file and group them.
The scan basically parses the file names and reads the comic info if applicable, updates the database with that information, and updates the pages and other information we need. If the file hasn't been modified since the last time we scanned, Kavita will not do extra processing on the file. If your archives contain metadata, it will override any parsed information from the file.
During the refresh covers task, same kind of logic applies. This is a heavy task because of the amount of I/o we have to perform and because the amount of memory we need to copy images out of the archive and onto the disk. In this task we don't open up any archives if they haven't been modified unless you do a refresh covers from the UI. In addition, even if it was modified, if you've locked the cover image by using the UI and uploading your own custom one, then we don't open up the archive either