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Quickstart

Quickstart guide for Hianime

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What is Hianime?

Hianime is an unofficial Node.js/TypeScript library that scrapes publicly available pages on hianime.to to retrieve anime data such as popular lists, TV shows, titles, and other metadata. It is a personal project intended for learning and tooling.

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What you can scrape

  • Most popular lists and other discovery feeds
  • TV shows and other category pages
  • Title pages and basic metadata (e.g., synopsis, genres, type)
  • Pagination info (page, totalPage, hasNextPage)
  • Episode lists and language availability (sub/dub) when exposed on page

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How it works (high level)

  • Makes HTTP requests to public pages on hianime.to and parses the HTML.
  • Selectors and structures can change; version changes on the site may break scraping until updated.
  • Some pages may apply anti-bot measures; set realistic headers, add delays, and backoff on errors.

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Core concepts

  • Pagination: Responses include page, totalPage, and hasNextPage. Use these to paginate safely.
  • IDs: Items may have a human-readable id (often a path) and a numeric dataId used internally by the site.
  • Language counts: language.sub / language.dub are counts reported by the site and may be strings.
  • Types: type values (e.g., “TV”, “Movie”) reflect site labels and can vary by entry.

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Usage guidelines

  • Add rate limiting and retries with exponential backoff to avoid stressing the site.
  • Send a realistic User-Agent and required headers where necessary.
  • Expect occasional breaking changes; handle errors and validate outputs.
  • Use only for educational/personal purposes and abide by the site’s Terms of Service.
Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by HiAnime or any third‑party streaming service This library only scrapes publicly accessible pages; use for educational/personal purposes Respect the website’s Terms of Service and robots.txt Do not download, redistribute, or commercialize copyrighted content Site structure may change at any time and break the scraper.

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Important Notes

  • Rate limiting: Add delays between requests to avoid overwhelming the server
  • Error handling: Always wrap API calls in try-catch blocks
  • Respect ToS: Use this library responsibly and respect HiAnime’s terms of service
  • Site changes: The scraper may break if the site structure changes