Discogs Data Tools

Some utilities to download and process Discogs monthly data dumps.

• Download data dumps from Discogs
• Verify data dumps with checksum
• Validate and normalize XML data in data dumps to plain objects
• Store entities in MongoDB collections

You can use the NodeJS API if you want to decide what to do with the formatted JS objects yourself, instead of writing them to a MongoDB database. See Node.JS API below for an example.

This module is not officially affiliated with Discogs. For license information on Discogs data dumps see: https://data.discogs.com/

Motivation

Discogs has a great API, but in some cases the way the data is structured makes it difficult to look up information without making too many API calls. That's why the monthly data dumps are very useful: you can structure and query the data according to the needs of your application. However, parsing the large and at some points somewhat inconsistent XML dumps into a database is not a trivial task. This tool is meant to help out with that.

Installation

• Install Node.JS (min 8.2.1)
• Some dependencies are built using node-gyp, which has additional prerequisites. See the node-gyp documentation for more info.
• Depending on your use case:
  • To use the NodeJS API in your own node application run npm install --save disogs-data-tools
  • To install the tool for global usage run npm install -g discogs-data-tools
  • Run the tool directly using npx (see CLI Usage below)

Data transformation

Data from the database will be transformed when using the mongo CLI command or when formatting using the dumpFormatter module. This is to fix some inconsistencies in the data and make it easier to work with:

• All properties are converted to camelCase
• All numeric string values are parsed to integers
• Everywhere where artist or label names appear, they are transformed to multiple properties:
  • The name as it appears in the Discogs dataset is stored as the originalName property
  • The name property contains the name without any (n) numeric postfix
  • The nameIndex property is set to the number inside the (n) numeric postfix if it exists. Otherwise it is set to 1
• The duration field of a track is converted to a number (the number of seconds). The unformatted string is stored in the originalDuration property
• Images objects are excluded as they do not contain URI. Instead an imageCount property is set which is equal to the number of images.
• Empty string values are excluded
• The embed property is removed from video (as it was always "true")
• Tracks that don't have a title or a position are excluded
• Identifiers that only have a type but no value are excluded
• Entities that should have a name but have no name or an empty string as name are completely excluded. (there seems to be a small number of them anyway). The CLI outputs warnings when it excludes entities.
• Incorrectly formatted release dates are transformed according to the Discogs Database Guidelines (either YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD). Release dates that cannot be transformed are removed.

To see the exact schema of formatted documents, see the JSON schema in the /schema/docs folder.

Database import

Currently, this library only contains utilities to import the data dumps into MongoDB. However, the NodeJS API allows you to use the same code to import into other databases. See the example in Node.JS API below. If you'd like to contribute a script to import into a different database, please send a PR :)

MongoDB Indexes

When using the mongo CLI command, some useful indexes will be automatically added to the database collections to make it faster to query the data. You can see the indexes in the mongoIndexSpec.json file. If you don't want these indexes to be added you can opt-out using the --no-indexes command line flag.

CLI Usage

• Use globally installed version: discogs-data-tools <command> ...args
• Using npx: npx discogs-data-tools <command> ...args

See the command-specific documentation below. Every command requires you to specify a target dump version. This can be done with either the --interactive (-i), --latest (-l) or --target-version (-t) argument.

fetch command

discogs-data-tools fetch <target> [...args]

Target (one required):
  --interactive, -i     Interactively select the target dump version                                 [boolean]
  --latest, -l          Automatically select the latest version                                      [boolean]
  --target-version, -t  Manually pass the name of the target dump version. ie: "20180101"             [string]

Optional args:
  --version            Show version number                                                           [boolean]
  --data-dir, -d       Root directory where dumps and related files are stored.   [string] [default: "./data"]
  --collections, -c    Select which collections to target. If not given, will target all
                                                 [array] [choices: "artists", "labels", "masters", "releases"]
  --help               Show help                                                                     [boolean]
  --hide-progress, -n  Don't show a progress bar                                                     [boolean]
  --skip-verify        Skip verifying the dumps with the checksum provided by Discogs                [boolean]

Examples:
  discogs-data-tools fetch --target-version 20180101 --collections labels masters

verify command

discogs-data-tools verify <target> [...args]

Target (one required):
  --interactive, -i     Interactively select the target dump version                                 [boolean]
  --latest, -l          Automatically select the latest version                                      [boolean]
  --target-version, -t  Manually pass the name of the target dump version. ie: "20180101"             [string]

Optional args:
  --version          Show version number                                                             [boolean]
  --data-dir, -d     Root directory where dumps and related files are stored.     [string] [default: "./data"]
  --collections, -c  Select which collections to target. If not given, will target all
                                                 [array] [choices: "artists", "labels", "masters", "releases"]
  --help             Show help                                                                       [boolean]

Examples:
  discogs-data-tools verify --latest
  discogs-data-tools verify --target-version 20180101 --collections releases

mongo command

Please note: this command will overwrite existing documents in your collection, if it already exists

discogs-data-tools mongo <target> [...args]

Target (one required):
  --interactive, -i     Interactively select the target dump version                                 [boolean]
  --latest, -l          Automatically select the latest version                                      [boolean]
  --target-version, -t  Manually pass the name of the target dump version. ie: "20180101"             [string]

Optional args:
  --version                   Show version number                                                    [boolean]
  --data-dir, -d              Root directory where dumps and related files are stored.
                                                                                  [string] [default: "./data"]
  --collections, -c           Select which collections to target. If not given, will target all
                                                 [array] [choices: "artists", "labels", "masters", "releases"]
  --help                      Show help                                                              [boolean]
  --chunk-size, -s            Number of rows in processing chunks. Larger size takes more memory.
                                                                                      [number] [default: 1000]
  --drop-existing-collection  Drop a collection if it already exists. Use with caution!              [boolean]
  --silent, -m                Mute all console output                                                [boolean]
  --indexes                   Create indexes on collections                          [boolean] [default: true]
  --skip-validation           Skip validation of XML nodes. Can considerably speed up processing, but you may
                              get invalid rows                                                       [boolean]
  --validate-docs             perform additional validation on the objects after theyhave been formatted. Used
                              for development, not necessary on usage                                [boolean]
  --max-errors, -e            Number of rows that could not be inserted before the command is aborted
                                                                                       [number] [default: 100]
  --bail, -b                  Immediately abort when a validation error occurs or a row failed to persist to
                              the database                                                           [boolean]
  --restart, -r               Don't continue processing from where it last stopped but restart at the first
                              row                                                                    [boolean]
  --database-name, -n         Name of the database to write to                   [string] [default: "discogs"]
  --connection, -o            The MongoDB connection string                                [string] [required]
  --include-image-objects     Include image objects. By default, will only include the image count because
                              image objects in data dumps are missing the URI                        [boolean]

Examples:
  discogs-data-tools mongo --no-indexes --latest --connection mongodb://root:pw@127.0.0.1:27017
  discogs-data-tools mongo --target-version 20180401 --restart --connection mongodb://root:pw@localhost:27017

IMPORTANT: please note that existing documents in MongoDB collections with the same name will be replaced

ls command

discogs-data-tools ls <target> [...args]

Target (one required):
  --interactive, -i     Interactively select the target dump version                                 [boolean]
  --latest, -l          Automatically select the latest version                                      [boolean]
  --target-version, -t  Manually pass the name of the target dump version. ie: "20180101"             [string]

Optional args:
  --version          Show version number                                                             [boolean]
  --data-dir, -d     Root directory where dumps and related files are stored.     [string] [default: "./data"]
  --collections, -c  Select which collections to target. If not given, will target all
                                                 [array] [choices: "artists", "labels", "masters", "releases"]
  --help             Show help                                                                       [boolean]

Node.JS API

const { listings, dataManager, fetcher } = require('discogs-data-tools');

• dataManager Lookup data dump files that have already been downloaded
• bucket Lookup available data dumps on the S3 bucket
• fetcher Download data dumps and show download progress

See api.md for available methods per module

Example: custom processing

TODO (coming soon)