pymal

Programmatic access to MyAnimeList data in Python. Objects are lazy-loading — MAL is only contacted when you first access a property.

Quick start

from pymal import anime

# Lazy — no network call yet
a = anime.Anime(52991)

# First property access triggers the MAL fetch
print(a.title)    # "Sousou no Frieren"
print(a.score)    # 9.07
print(a.episodes) # 28
print(a.genres)   # {'Adventure': '...', 'Drama': '...', 'Fantasy': '...'}
print(a.english)  # "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End"
print(a.japanese) # "葬送のフリーレン"

Installation

With uv (recommended)

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh   # install uv once

git clone https://github.com/varyg1001/pymal
cd pymal
uv sync

With pip

git clone https://github.com/varyg1001/pymal
cd pymal
pip install -e .

Requirements

• Python >=3.10, <3.15
• uv (recommended) or pip

Key runtime dependencies (full list in pyproject.toml):

Search & Endpoint Features

• Search API: Search providers (SearchAnimesProvider, SearchMangasProvider) automatically query MyAnimeList's modern prefix.json API endpoint (/search/prefix.json), falling back gracefully if needed.
• Seasons: Seasonal anime lookups (Season, Seasons) scrape directly from native MyAnimeList season pages (/anime/season/<year>/<season>) and the archive listing (/anime/season/archive).
• User Lists: Account anime and manga lists (AccountAnimes, AccountMangas) utilize MAL's modern JSON list endpoints (load.json).

Running tests

# Offline suite — no network or account needed (40 tests)
uv run pytest tests/test_fixes.py -v

# Full suite — account tests auto-skip unless credentials are set
MAL_USERNAME=you MAL_PASSWORD=secret uv run pytest -v

Project structure

pymal/
├── pymal/
│   ├── anime.py                  # Anime object
│   ├── manga.py                  # Manga object
│   ├── account.py                # MAL account & auth
│   ├── global_functions.py       # HTTP + HTML parsing helpers
│   ├── account_objects/          # MyAnime, MyManga, lists, friends
│   ├── searches/                 # Search providers
│   └── inner_objects/            # Season, recommendation, etc.
├── tests/
│   ├── test_fixes.py             # Offline test suite (40 tests)
│   └── account_objects/          # Live account tests (skipped without creds)
├── docs/                         # MkDocs documentation source
├── mkdocs.yml                    # Docs config (GitHub Pages)
├── pyproject.toml                # Build config & pinned deps (uv_build)
└── uv.lock                       # Lockfile — commit this

What changed in v1.0.0

The original project (v0.5b4–v0.6) had broken against MAL's HTML updates and modern Python. v1.0.0 brings it back to life:

Also fixed latent bugs: == used instead of = in my_anime.py and my_manga.py meant download_episodes and times_rewatched were never actually stored.

Credits

Original authors

pymal was created and developed by:

• tomer gelber — tomergelber@gmail.com
• Aur Saraf — sonoflilit@gmail.com

Original repository: pymal-developers/pymal

v1.0.0

The update was made with mostly AI. The main reason for the update is the errors cause by the old things used in the last released version. I still feel that this is the easiest way to get info from MAL, even with the original version, since MAL has not changed much.

License

BSD License — see original repository for full text.