jikan

Release candidate 2. Bug fixes only since 5.0.0-rc.1; the API is unchanged. jikan-rest found both problems while validating rc.1: three of its endpoints (/anime/{id}/news, /manga/{id}/news and /manga/{id}/userupdates) came back empty.

Fixed

• getNewsList() returns the articles on an anime's or manga's news page again (AnimeNewsRequest, MangaNewsRequest; jikan#661). Those pages have their own layout (no div.news-unit), which the parser stopped reading when it was realigned to the main news index in v5.0.0-beta, so it returned an empty list. Each article has its title, /news/{id} URL, date, author, discussion link, comment count, excerpt and image, with absolute links. Anything fetched through these requests since v5.0.0-beta was empty.
• getNewsList() pagination: getLastVisiblePage() was always 1, even when hasNextPage() was true. It is the furthest page the links reach. And hasNextPage() no longer counts the "News" tab, which links to the page you're on, so the last page of a long news list no longer claims a next page.
• "Recently updated by users" for anime and manga (getAnimeRecentlyUpdatedByUsers(), getMangaRecentlyUpdatedByUsers(); jikan#663):
  • Crashes on a bare -. MyAnimeList prints a progress cell as just - for many users (39 of 75 rows on manga 2). The total getters assumed a read/total pair and raised Undefined array key 1; where warnings become exceptions (Laravel does), a catch-all in getResults() then returned no rows at all for the page. Those cells now read as unknown.
  • An unknown total is null, not 0. 5/? (the series is still running) gave a total of 0; it is null. If you treated 0 as "unknown", check for null.
  • A row that cannot be parsed is an error, reported as ParserException, instead of an empty page next to a hasNextPage() that could be true. A page without the table still has no rows.

Full changelog: https://github.com/jikan-me/jikan/compare/v5.0.0-rc.1...v5.0.0-rc.2

Release candidate. The v5 API is frozen: from here until 5.0.0 only bug fixes land, and anything that would change a signature waits for the next major. Upgrading from v4? Read UPGRADING.md. Compared with 5.0.0-beta.3, three values changed, all listed below.

Changed

• Anime-card start dates (getAiringStart() on genre, producer, seasonal and schedule cards) are UTC midnight of the day shown, like Anime::getAired() and the episode dates. They were midnight in Japan converted to UTC, so "Oct 2, 2026" gave 2026-10-01T15:00:00+00:00 and a year-only "2027" gave 2026-12-31T15:00:00+00:00, the previous year. The instant is 9 hours later; if you read the date part, it is now the day shown. Text that carries a broadcast time still converts from Japan time.
• AnimeEpisode::getAired() (from getAnimeEpisode()) is UTC midnight of the printed day, like the episode list and Anime::getAired(). It was midnight in Japan (1999-10-20T00:00:00+09:00), because the page prints "Aired: Oct 20, 1999(JST)" and PHP read the "(JST)" as a UTC+9 offset, so the same episode had two different dates depending on the endpoint (jikan-rest#567). The calendar date is unchanged; the instant is 9 hours later. If you compared timestamps between the two endpoints, they are now equal. A new check in the snapshot tests fails on any date that is not UTC.
• getHelpfulCount() on anime and manga reviews returns the review's total reactions. MyAnimeList's 2022 review redesign replaced "helpful" votes with reactions (Nice, Love it, Funny, Confusing, Informative, Well-written, Creative), and this is their total. It counts every reaction, not only approving ones; use getReactions() for the breakdown. Before this, the anime version always returned 0 and the manga version failed looking for the removed vote count.

Full changelog: https://github.com/jikan-me/jikan/compare/v5.0.0-beta.3...v5.0.0-rc.1

Pre-release, and the last planned API change before the release candidate. Read Breaking before upgrading: 31 getters that could throw a TypeError now return null, and AnimeCard::getMembers() returns null instead of throwing.

Breaking

• 31 model getters can now return null, where they used to throw a TypeError on pages that don't show the field. You must handle null from these getters; code that only ran on pages with the field present sees no difference.

  • Anime::getDuration()
  • EpisodeListItem::getScore(), getUrl(), getForumUrl()
  • StreamEpisodeListItem::getMalId()
  • ResourceArticle::getDate()
  • NewsMeta::getDate(), getMalId()
  • NewsListItem::getDate(), ResourceNews::getDate(), ResourceNewsListItem::getDate()
  • getMalId() on AnimeGenreListItem, MangaGenreListItem, MagazineListItem and ProducerListItem
  • Person::getMemberFavorites()
  • VoiceActingRole::getRole()
  • UserSearchListItem::getLastOnline()
  • AnimeStats: getDaysWatched(), getEpisodesWatched(), getMeanScore(), getRewatched(), getTotalEntries()
  • MangaStats: getChaptersRead(), getDaysRead(), getMeanScore(), getReread(), getTotalEntries(), getVolumesRead()
  • Profile::getLocation()
  • UserReviews::getLastVisiblePage()

  Each was declared non-null while its parser already returned null when MyAnimeList leaves the field out, for example an episode nobody has voted on, or a profile without a location.

• AnimeCard::getMembers() returns ?int: null when a card shows no member count. In beta.2 it raised ParserException, which failed the whole page. You must handle null.

Fixed

• getUserReviews() pagination: hasNextPage() was always true and getLastVisiblePage() always 1, so paging through a user's reviews never ended. MyAnimeList shows 10 reviews per page and links only the next page ("More Reviews"), so hasNextPage() now reports that link and getLastVisiblePage() is the next page when there is one.
• getAnimeScores() and getMangaScores() on anime reviews, manga reviews and reviewers return the reviewer's overall rating. They always failed: the anime one called a parser that had been deleted, and the manga one read a score table that no longer exists. MyAnimeList's 2022 review redesign dropped the per-category ratings, so getOverall() is the "Reviewer's Rating" and the category getters (getStory(), getAnimation(), getArt() and so on) return null. AnimeReviewScores/MangaReviewScores are built with fromOverall(); their fromParser() and Jikan\Parser\Manga\MangaReviewScoresParser, which could not work, are removed.

Full changelog: https://github.com/jikan-me/jikan/compare/v5.0.0-beta.2...v5.0.0-beta.3

Pre-release. Hardening and fidelity work on the ^5 line since v5.0.0-beta: parser fixes found by a recorded-page test corpus and mutation testing, plus fields MyAnimeList serves that were read wrong or not at all. Read Breaking and Changed before upgrading: the PHP floor is now 8.4.4, AnimeCard::getLicensors() is gone, and SEARCH_MANGA_NOVEL changed value.

Breaking

• AnimeCard::getLicensors() is removed, and so SeasonalAnime::getLicensors() too — you must stop calling it. Anime cards on genre, producer and seasonal lists no longer show licensors on MyAnimeList, and the method has returned an empty list since. Licensors are still on the anime itself: Anime::getLicensors() from getAnime().
• PHP floor raised to 8.4.4 — you must run PHP 8.4.4 or later; Composer no longer installs on 8.4.0–8.4.3. Those patch levels have a bug in PHP's own HTML5 parser (Dom\HTMLDocument, php-src GH-17481) that corrupts some 4-byte characters (emoji, rare scripts) depending on where they fall in the page, so a parsed field can contain invalid UTF-8 and json_encode() fails on the model. Seen on a real MyAnimeList manga review.

Added

• Search filter constants for the options MyAnimeList's search form has gained:
  • Anime types SEARCH_ANIME_CM (7), SEARCH_ANIME_PV (8) and SEARCH_ANIME_TV_SPECIAL (9).
  • Manga type SEARCH_MANGA_LIGHT_NOVEL (2).
  • Manga statuses SEARCH_MANGA_STATUS_ON_HIATUS (4) and SEARCH_MANGA_STATUS_DISCONTINUED (5).
• Jikan\Helper\Time resolves MyAnimeList's relative and partial dates ("Yesterday, 9:25 PM", "5 hours ago", "Oct 13", weekdays) against a PSR-20 clock from the new symfony/clock dependency. By default that is the system clock, so results are unchanged. You can pin "now", for example in your own tests, with Symfony\Component\Clock\Clock::set(new MockClock(...)).

Changed

• Constants::SEARCH_MANGA_NOVEL is now 8 (was 2). MyAnimeList's manga search now reads 2 as Light Novel and 8 as Novel, so this constant was searching for light novels. If you want light novels, use the new Constants::SEARCH_MANGA_LIGHT_NOVEL (2).
• symfony/dom-crawler is now a declared requirement (^7.4 || ^8.0). The library has always used it directly but only received it through symfony/browser-kit, so nothing changes in your tree — no action needed unless you were excluding it.
• A seasonal page parses roughly 3x faster (about 1.2 s down to 0.4 s in our benchmark). The marker for "continuing" shows was found by reading the text of the whole season section once per anime card; it is now read once per section. The returned Seasonal model is identical.
• An anime card with no member count now raises ParserException from MalClient (a RuntimeException from AnimeCardParser::getMembers()), where it used to raise an uncaught \TypeError that catch (\Exception) and catch (ParserException) both missed. If you caught \TypeError around client calls to work around this, catch ParserException instead.
• Jikan\Model\Manga\MangaReviewer and Jikan\Parser\Manga\MangaReviewerParser are removed. They extended classes that were deleted earlier, so loading either one was a fatal error and nothing referenced them; no working code can have depended on them.
• Jikan\Model\User\Friend::getFriendsSince() returns ?\DateTimeImmutable: null when MyAnimeList shows no "Friends since" date. It used to declare a non-null date and throw a TypeError in that case.

Fixed

• Anime cards (genre, producer, seasonal and schedule pages; AnimeCard/SeasonalAnime) now read their type and start date from fields MyAnimeList puts on every card. This fixes four problems:
  • Year-only start dates: getAiringStart() gave today's date for a card that shows only a year ("2027"), because the year was read as the time 20:27 today. It now gives 1 January of that year.
  • Schedule page types: getType() gave the day of the week ("Friday", "Other") inst