Live demo: https://pytaku.imnhan.com (db may be hosed any time, also expect bugs)

Production instance coming When It's Ready (tm).

Pytaku

Pytaku is a WIP web-based manga reader that keeps track of your reading progress and new chapter updates. Its design goals are:

• Self-host friendly - if you have a UNIX-like server with python3.11+ and can run pip install, you're good.

• Phone/tablet friendly - although I hardly read any webtoons these days so the phone experience may not be as polished.

• KISSFFS, or Keep It reaSonably Simple you F-ing architecture/tooling FetishiSts! Oftentimes I have enough practice on industrial grade power tools at work so at home I want a change of pace. Flask + raw SQL has been surprisingly comfy. On the other side, mithril.js provides a good baseline of SPA functionality without having to pull in the Rube Goldberg machine that is """modern""" JS devtools.

Keyboard shortcuts

On Chapter page, press ? to show keyboard shortcuts.

Development

## Backend ##
uv sync

pytaku-generate-config > pytaku.conf.json
# fill stuff as needed

# run migration script once
pytaku-migrate

# run 2 processes:
pytaku-dev -p 8000  # development webserver
pytaku-scheduler  # scheduled tasks e.g. update titles


## Frontend ##

sudo pacman -S entr esbuild

# Listen for changes in js-src dir, automatically build minified bundle:
find src/pytaku/js-src -name '*.js' | entr -rc ./build.py js

We use build.py as a less annoying Makefile.

Optional proxy

Weebcentral's previous incarnation, mangasee, used to deploy a somewhat aggressive cloudflare protection level that cloudscraper alone couldn't bypass. So I had to send requests through a crappy GAE-based proxy. Apparently it isn't necessary anymore.

FWIW, in order to use it, you'll need to deploy your own gae-proxy on Google App Engine, then fill out OUTGOING_PROXY_NETLOC and OUTGOING_PROXY_KEY accordingly.

Yes it's not a standards-compliant http(s) proxy so you can't just use yours. I chose the cheapest (free) way to get a somewhat reliable IP-rotating proxy.

Tests

Can be run with just pytest. It needs a pytaku.conf.json as well.

Code QA tools

• Python: ruff
• JavaScript: jshint, prettier

sudo pacman -S ruff prettier
npm install -g --prefix ~/.node_modules jshint

Production

I'm running my instance on Debian 12, but any unix-like environment with these should work:

• python3.11+
• the rest are all pypi packages that should be automatically installed when you run pip install pytaku

The following is a step-by-step guide on Debian 12 using pipx for demonstration purposes. It's possible to use any python isolation technique (virtualenv, venv, etc.) - personally I'm running pytaku in production using a venv.

sudo apt install pipx
pipx install pytaku
# you now have access to pytaku commands

pytaku-generate-config > pytaku.conf.json
# fill stuff as needed

# run migration script once
pytaku-migrate

# run 2 processes:
pytaku -w 7  # production web server - args are passed as-is to gunicorn
pytaku-scheduler  # scheduled tasks e.g. update titles

# don't forget to setup your proxy, same as in development:
# https://git.sr.ht/~nhanb/gae-proxy

# upgrades:
pipx upgrade pytaku
pytaku-migrate
# then restart `pytaku` & `pytaku-scheduler` processes

If you're exposing your instance to the internet, I don't have to remind you to properly set up a firewall and a TLS-terminating reverse proxy e.g. nginx/caddy, right?

Alternatively, just setup a personal tailscale network and let them worry about access control and end-to-end encryption for you.

Optional optimization

With the setup above, you're serving static assets using gunicorn, which is not ideal performance-wise. For private usage this doesn't really matter. However, if you want to properly serve static assets using nginx and the like, you can copy all static assets into a designated directory with:

pytaku-collect-static target_dir

This will copy all assets into target_dir/static. You can now instruct nginx/caddy/etc. to serve this dir on /static/* paths.

LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2021 Bùi Thành Nhân

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.