A Ruby library and CLI tool for managing comic books archives.

• extract: to open a .cb* file
• archive: to create a .cb* file
• info: to read ComicInfo.xml metadata from a .cb* file
• pages: to list page image files in a .cb* file

Support for archive and extract :

• CB: a folder of images, an optional ComicInfo.xml metadata file
• CB7: 7zip
• CBT: Tar
• CBZ: Zip default

Suppor for only extract:

• CBR: RAR is proprietary without an open source implementation license. Extracting support because a large number of comic books are archived in .cbr/.rar format. No support for creating .cbr files will ever be added unless RAR is open source (or reverse engineered).
• PDF: Convert a PDF to a .cb* archive using libvips . Requires libvips installed on the system.
• CBA: ACE is both proprietary and very old/outdated/unsupported. ACE extracting support is planned, to support historical posterity and completeness. NEEDED: actual .cba files to test against (with and without ComicInfo.xml).

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

bundle add comicbook

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

gem install comicbook

# Extract a comic book archive
comicbook extract path/to/archive.cbz

# Extract to a specific destination
comicbook extract path/to/archive.cbz --to path/to/output

# Extract only image files (exclude metadata like ComicInfo.xml)
comicbook extract path/to/archive.cbz --images-only

# Extract PDF at custom DPI (default: 300)
comicbook extract path/to/comic.pdf --dpi 600

# Create a comic book archive from a folder
comicbook archive path/to/folder

# Create archive at a specific destination
comicbook archive path/to/folder --to path/to/output.cbz

# Show ComicInfo.xml metadata
comicbook info path/to/archive.cbz

# Show info in different formats
comicbook info path/to/archive.cbz --format json
comicbook info path/to/archive.cbz --format yaml
comicbook info path/to/archive.cbz --format terse

# Show only specific fields
comicbook info path/to/archive.cbz --only title,writer,publisher

# Show all fields except specific ones
comicbook info path/to/archive.cbz --except summary,review

# Show help
comicbook --help

# Extract a comic book archive (extracts all files by default)
ComicBook.extract 'path/to/archive.cbz'

# Extract to a specific destination
ComicBook.extract 'path/to/archive.cbz', to: 'path/to/output'

# Extract only image files (exclude metadata like ComicInfo.xml)
ComicBook.extract 'path/to/archive.cbz', images_only: true

# Create a comic book archive from a folder (creates .cbz by default)
ComicBook.new('path/to/folder').archive

# Create archive at a specific destination
ComicBook.new('path/to/folder').archive to: 'path/to/output.cbz'

# Get pages from an archive
comic = ComicBook.new 'path/to/archive.cbz'
comic.pages  # => [#<ComicBook::Page>, ...]

# Read ComicInfo.xml metadata
comic = ComicBook.new 'path/to/archive.cbz'
comic.info        # => #<ComicInfo::Issue> or nil
comic.info.title  # => "The Amazing Spider-Man"
comic.info.writer # => "Dan Slott, Christos Gage"

PDF support requires libvips. Install it with brew bundle (uses the included Brewfile) or manually:

brew install vips             # macOS
sudo apt install libvips-dev  # Linux

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment. To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/veganstraightedge/comicbook. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Everyone interacting in the Comicbook project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.