About

UsagiDB is an API project made for CSC 130 Project 2 (source code available on GitHub). It is a site where you can search for all anime, manga, light novel related. The motivation behind the project was to create a frontend that any one of the single existing solutions lacks. Essentially, I want to combine all the good features of other sites into one. However, there is much more to the story behind it.

I confess, UsagiDB's development started before any prompts or project descriptions were revealed, so I decided it should be fine as long as I include every concept taught in CSC 130. Additionally, I will spice things up with content not covered by the course. At that point, I had no idea how deep of a rabbit hole I was heading into.

UsgaiDB translates to Rabbit Database. Why rabbit you might ask? Well, it is obviously because this project itself is a rabbit hole! Hence, the name is UsagiDB.

Although I am calling this a database, nowhere does it store any of the primary content (no data about anime, books, etc, except for a bit of caching to speed things up and some user data); content is accessed via an API. Furthermore, the API I am using is an unofficial API to MyAnimeList, the actual database. Therefore, you could say this is an unofficial database, or "underground" if you will.

Therefore, when you add the meanings together, UsagiDB is simply the underground rabbit database or a deep rabbit hole. Hmm, does it make sense? Maybe I am trying too hard to justify my horrible naming sense.


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