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CVINFO and CVDB tags

Cory Banack edited this page Mar 2, 2024 · 3 revisions

The CVINFO file

You can create a special file called cvinfo in any folder where you keep your comic book scans. Whenever you scrape a new comic that's stored in the same folder as a cvinfo file, the scraper will use cvinfo to automatically determine which series your comic belongs to.

The cvinfo file must be a plain text file, like you would create with Notepad, or some other simple text editor. It should contain exactly one line, and that line should be the web address (URL) for a comic book series at the ComicVine website.

For example, if you have a folder that contains ONLY issues from "Detective Comics", you could add a cvinfo file with the following:

http://www.comicvine.gamespot.com/detective-comics/4050-18058/

See that number "4050-18058" at the end? That's the important part. In fact, that's the only part we care about, so you can even omit all the other parts of the URL if you want.


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CVDB Tags

Comic Vine Scraper (or you!) can add a special marker called a "CVDB Tag" into the Tags and Notes sections of each of your scraped comics. If you look in the Tags or Notes of any comic that you've already scraped, you'll find an example of a CVDB tag. It will look something like "CVDB123456".

The scraper can use these CVDB tags to figure out which Comic Vine entry you chose the last time you scraped each comic. As long as your comics have their CVDB tags, you won't have to choose Comic Vine entries again when you re-scrape them; the scraper will automatically remember which entry to use.

There is also a special tag called "CVDBSKIP", which causes the scraper to ignore comics. There are two ways you can add a CVDBSKIP tag to a comic scan:

  1. Using ComicRackCE, type the word "CVDBSKIP" into the Tags and Notes for that comic. (Replace any previous CVDB tag that might already be there.)
  2. When you are scraping your comics, hold down the "Control" key and click the "Skip" button when the comic you want to CVDBSKIP comes up

If you do this, Comic Vine Scraper will COMPLETELY IGNORE your comic from now on. In other words, it will never try to scrape that comic ever again, even if you tell it to. Of course, if you change your mind and decide you don't want this, all you need to do is remove the CVDBSKIP tag.