Parker Comic Server

Parker is a self‑hosted media server for comic books (CBZ/CBR). It follows a “Filesystem is Truth” philosophy, parsing metadata directly from ComicInfo.xml inside archives. Parker is currently at Version 0.1.16 (Stable).

https://github.com/parker-server/parker/wiki/Getting-Started

✨ Features

Library Management
- Hierarchy: Library → Series → Volume → Comic
- Rich metadata (credits, tags, page counts, colors)
- Reading Lists, Collections, Story Arcs, Pull Lists, Smart Lists
User System
- Multi‑library access with row‑level security
- Avatar uploads
- Hybrid authentication (JWT + secure cookies)
Reader
- Context‑aware navigation (series, volume, lists)
- Manga mode (RTL), double‑page spreads
- Zero‑latency engine with preloading and swipe navigation
- Image inspection tools
Discovery
- Netflix‑style home page with content rails
- Recommendations by creator or metadata
- Random gems, recently updated series
Reports Dashboard
- Missing Issues
- Storage Analysis
- Duplicate Detector
- Metadata Health
- Corrupt / Low Page Count
Scanning
- Background ScanManager with priority queues
- Timestamp bubbling for updated series
- Physical page count validation
- ⚡ Parallel Thumbnail Generation (Optional)
  - Multiprocessing pipeline for thumbnails
  - Distributes image decoding, resizing, WebP encoding, and palette extraction across CPU cores
  - Dedicated writer process batches SQLite commits safely
  - On an 8‑core i7, 3,541 comics dropped from 13m40s → 1m58s
  - Fully opt‑in via Settings; 0 = auto (use all cores), values above CPU count are clamped
Visuals
- Dynamic backgrounds from cover colors
- Cover Browser gallery mode
Enrichment
- Auto‑populated event descriptions
- Reading time estimates
Search
- Advanced rule‑based search builder
- Saved searches → Smart Lists
- Secure autocomplete
OPDS Support
- OPDS 1.2 compliant feeds
- Dublin Core metadata
- Legacy client authentication
- User dashboard integration
WebP Transcoding
- On‑the‑fly conversion for bandwidth savings
- Smart resizing and thresholds
- Per‑device opt‑in

🛠 Tech Stack

Backend: Python 3.10+, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, APScheduler, Watchdog
Frontend: Jinja2, Alpine.js, TailwindCSS (CDN)
Image Processing: Pillow, Color Thief
Deployment: Docker / Docker Compose
Database: SQLite (WAL mode) with FTS5

🔒 Architecture Highlights

Row‑Level Security: Users restricted to accessible libraries
Dependency Injection: Security enforced via ComicDep, SeriesDep, VolumeDep
Context‑Aware Reader: Strategy pattern for next/prev navigation
Soft Landing Errors: Inline UI errors instead of hard redirects
Hybrid Settings: Environment variables + DB runtime preferences

📊 Data Model

Libraries, Series, Volumes, Comics
Collections, Reading Lists, Pull Lists, Smart Lists
User access control
Batch operations (mark read/unread, add to lists)

🚀 Getting Started

https://github.com/parker-server/parker/wiki/Getting-Started

📌 Roadmap

Documentation
Remaining UI polish (remove the remaining native JS dialogs with custom modals)
Expanded OPDS support
Localization
Enhanced WebP transcoding pipeline
Additional unit test coverage
Migration tooling improvements
Add support to leverage the Age restriction attribute against a user
Pin libraries to front page
Improve admin Add Library dialog to be able to browse to a folder rather than type it in
Support multiple folder locations per library
Light metadata editing with file writeback

🤝 Contributing

Parker is early‑stage but stable. Contributions are welcome! Please check the issues list for open tasks, or propose new features via pull requests.

📜 License

MIT License

Parker

Install / Use

README