How to use
This guide will show you how to configure CosmicComics and how to use it afterwards.
When you open CosmicComics for the very first time, there is no account, so you will be prompted to create your first account.
They're no ADMIN account, all accounts share the same rights.
You will be prompted to enter a username and password (optional).
Once on the connection page, you will have a list of accounts available on the server, select the one you want and, if one is set, the password for the account you want to login.
In case you want to change the language of the app, you can modify it under the settings.
CosmicComics offers some themes to customize your experience, you can switch them under the settings.
You can modify your account by clicking under your avatar and select Modify Account. On this page you can modify your username, password, avatar, download your database and delete your account.
This is the most complicated part because you will need some third-party API keys on some APIs.
CosmicComics use APIs to get information about your books, this is required only for some APIs.
This is the list of current supported APIs
- Anilist (No key needed)
- OpenLibrary (No key needed)
- Marvel (Need keys)
- Google Books (Need keys)
- Manual (well, you're in charge for this one)
Head towards :
https://developer.marvel.com/account
Create an account and register to get an API key.
Once done, insert the API key inside the .env file
Create a new project at https://console.cloud.google.com/ with wathever name you want.
Now, head to https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials and like the image below, add Books API.
Get your keys and fill them in the .env file.
For the APIs which need keys to work, you will need to find or create a file called .env.
In some case you will find the .env.sample which contains the template, just rename it to .env.
This files are located in the root folder of the server (near the server.js file).
Here is the template of the .env file:
#API Keys
GBOOKSAPIKEY=""
MARVEL_PRIVATE_KEY=""
MARVEL_PUBLIC_KEY=""
#Features Flags
ENABLE_REACT_ROUTER="true"In order to get the API detect the right series and books inside it, you will need to respect the following folder structure : --> Serie name (year) --> Book name (year) --> Book name (year) --> Book name (year) --> etc... --> Serie name (year) --> Book name (year) --> Book name (year) --> etc... --> etc...
CosmicComics organize your collection of books in Libraries. You can create as many as you want, they relies on their own API.
A library is composed of the name, the path of the folder to look inside on the server and of course what's API to use.
Once created, you can enter it.
The first time can take a couple of minutes because the server looks inside the location for your books and will call the related API to get the information from.
You can modify a library by clicking on the three dots near it on the sidebar and then select Modify Library.
You can change all of what you have previously set in this panel.
For some APIs you will have access to the series, which contains the books.
The page will provide some information about the serie itself. Information like description, staffs, characters, variants and of course the books themself.
Some actions are possible, like play the next book in the list, modify the information set the status for all the book in the series, etc...
Like the series, the book page will provide the book information with nearly the same features than the series.
You can bookmark as many pages as you want directly from the reader. All the bookmarks are accessible from the navigation menu on the collectionner.
The reader is a tough one.
When the reader loads, the book is extracted in background and when ready, the page shows up.
You can navigate via the buttons in the bottom, the directional arrows and the left/right arrow on-screen.
All the other options available can be find on the top-bar.
Some options are rotations, zooms, magnifier, auto align and the bookmark toggle.