CBZ

CBZ is a Python library designed for creating, manipulating, and viewing comic book files in CBZ, CBR, and PDF formats. It offers a straightforward interface to pack comic pages into CBZ archives, extract metadata from CBZ and CBR files, and display comics using a built-in player.

Features

• 🚀 Seamless Installation via pip
• 📚 Pack images into CBZ format for comics and manga
• 📝 Extract and manage title, series, format, and more
• 🖼️ Handle comic pages with attributes like type and format
• 📦 Unpack CBZ and CBR files to retrieve comic information, or extract images from PDF files
• 🛠️ Built-in player for viewing CBZ, CBR, and PDF comics
• 📚 Full CBR (RAR) format support for reading existing archives
• ❤️ Fully Open-Source! Pull Requests Welcome

Installation

Install CBZ from PyPI using pip:

pip install cbz

Quick Start

Here's a quick example of how to create a CBZ file from a series of images:

from pathlib import Path

from cbz.comic import ComicInfo
from cbz.constants import PageType, YesNo, Manga, AgeRating, Format
from cbz.page import PageInfo

PARENT = Path(__file__).parent

if __name__ == '__main__':
    paths = list(Path('path/to/your/images').iterdir())

    # Load each page from the 'images' folder into a list of PageInfo objects
    pages = [
        PageInfo.load(
            path=path,
            type=PageType.FRONT_COVER if i == 0 else PageType.BACK_COVER if i == len(paths) - 1 else PageType.STORY
        )
        for i, path in enumerate(paths)
    ]

    # Create a ComicInfo object using ComicInfo.from_pages() method
    comic = ComicInfo.from_pages(
        pages=pages,
        title='Your Comic Title',
        series='Your Comic Series',
        number=1,
        language_iso='en',
        format=Format.WEB_COMIC,
        black_white=YesNo.NO,
        manga=Manga.NO,
        age_rating=AgeRating.PENDING
    )

    # Show the comic using the show()
    comic.show()

    # Pack the comic book content into a CBZ file format
    cbz_content = comic.pack()

    # Define the path where the CBZ file will be saved
    cbz_path = PARENT / 'your_comic.cbz'

    # Write the CBZ content to the specified path
    cbz_path.write_bytes(cbz_content)

Player

CBZ includes a command-line player for viewing comic book files in multiple formats. Simply run cbzplayer <file> to launch the player with the specified comic book file.

Supported Formats

• CBZ (Comic Book ZIP) - Standard ZIP archives containing images and metadata
• CBR (Comic Book RAR) - RAR archives containing images and metadata
• PDF - Portable Document Format files with embedded images (images only, no metadata)

Usage

usage: cbzplayer [-h] <file>

Launch CBZ player with a comic book file

positional arguments:
  <file>      Path to the CBZ, CBR, or PDF comic book file.

options:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

Examples

# View a CBZ file
cbzplayer my_comic.cbz

# View a CBR file
cbzplayer my_comic.cbr

# View a PDF file
cbzplayer my_comic.pdf

Requirements for CBR Support

CBR file support requires:

• The rarfile Python package (automatically installed with CBZ)
• An external RAR extraction tool such as:
  • unrar (recommended) - Available in most package managers
  • rar - Commercial RAR archiver
  • 7zip - Free alternative with RAR support

For installation instructions and compatibility details, see the rarfile documentation.

Detailed Usage

Creating a ComicInfo Object

The ComicInfo class represents a comic book with metadata and pages. It supports initialization from a list of PageInfo objects:

from cbz.comic import ComicInfo
from cbz.constants import PageType, YesNo, Manga, AgeRating, Format
from cbz.page import PageInfo

# Example usage:
pages = [
    PageInfo.load(path='/path/to/page1.jpg', type=PageType.FRONT_COVER),
    PageInfo.load(path='/path/to/page2.jpg', type=PageType.STORY),
    PageInfo.load(path='/path/to/page3.jpg', type=PageType.BACK_COVER),
]

comic = ComicInfo.from_pages(
    pages=pages,
    title='My Comic',
    series='Comic Series',
    number=1,
    language_iso='en',
    format=Format.WEB_COMIC,
    black_white=YesNo.NO,
    manga=Manga.NO,
    age_rating=AgeRating.PENDING
)

Extracting Metadata

Retrieve comic information as a dictionary using get_info():

info = comic.get_info()
print(info)

Packing into CBZ Format

Pack the comic into a CBZ file format:

cbz_content = comic.pack()

Loading from Different Formats

Load a comic from an existing CBZ file (with metadata):

comic_from_cbz = ComicInfo.from_cbz('/path/to/your_comic.cbz')

Load a comic from an existing CBR file (with metadata):

comic_from_cbr = ComicInfo.from_cbr('/path/to/your_comic.cbr')

Load a comic from a PDF file (images only, no metadata):

comic_from_pdf = ComicInfo.from_pdf('/path/to/your_comic.pdf')

Notes:

• CBR support requires an external RAR extraction tool. For detailed compatibility information and advanced configuration, see the rarfile documentation.
• PDF files only provide image content; comic metadata (title, series, etc.) is not available from PDF files.

Contributors

Licensing

This software is licensed under the terms of MIT License. You can find a copy of the license in the LICENSE file in the root folder.

Third-Party Licenses

This project uses the following third-party libraries:

• langcodes - MIT License
• Pillow - HPND License
• pypdf - BSD License
• rarfile - ISC License
• xmltodict - MIT License

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