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I've noticed while working on an application that much of the data stored in MAL is inaccessible through the API. I believe that it would help developers (myself included) who want to utilize the data if the following functionality was added to the API:

List of ID numbers for all entries
Data for cast and staff
Data for official websites, ANN id number, AniDB id number, etc

The need for anime/manga id for lookup has been mentioned before and should really be common sense. Can't disagree there.

I think that by list you mean the related series, which would be useful in the various updater applications. Not having them makes recognition of some sequels impossible. I know MAL Updater is forced to circumvent this by indexing sequel relations externally.


You may want to elaborate exactly why these changes would be useful. I don't see much use in staff info being listed, and since they are in a separate table it increases the needed queries on the database.

I'd also like to think MAL's database can stand on its own without cross-referencing other database sites, and they often do not have corresponding entries -- for example when different seasons have separate entries. At one point those links were nearly all removed.

I think everybody would like more API information available, but you'll have to convince Xinil and Crave of the benefits.

By list I mean a master list of all valid series in the database. As it stands now, I see no way to get this data without blasting the API and seeing which return valid entries.

Staff and cast would be incredibly useful since they frequently affect the show in very drastic ways. I like being able to find favorite directors, composers, and voice actors, which MAL provides on the main site, but no API exists to work with this data.

The MAL database does an excellent job at standing on its own, but the fact that the API is so limited makes its use incredibly limited by any third party developers. MAL has much (if not all) of the data that I need, it's just inaccessible.