# Fragrantika News & Comments Datasets — Technical Specification
**Snapshot date:** 2026-10-19 (v5.19)
**Source:** `fragrantica.com` and 22 localized domains (`fragrantica.de`, `fragrantica.ru`, etc.)
**Format:** Apache Parquet (Zstandard compression)
**Total combined size:** ~1.56 GB on disk
This document specifies three datasets that complement the existing
Fragrantika perfume database (`merged_database`, `brands_database_v2`,
`perfumers_database_v2`, `notes_database_v2` — already documented and sold
separately):
1. **`comments.parquet`** — user reviews on individual perfumes
2. **`news.parquet`** — editorial articles published on Fragrantika
3. **`news_comments.parquet`** — user comments under those articles
The cross-dataset relationships in §5 explain how to join these with the
existing perfume/brand/perfumer DBs via primary keys.
---
## 1. Overview
| Dataset | Rows | Compressed Size | Distinct entities |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| `comments.parquet` | 5,024,093 | 1.41 GB | 98,252 perfumes, 23 languages |
| `news.parquet` | 25,875 articles | 115 MB | NID 1..26385 |
| `news_comments.parquet` | 279,843 | 37 MB | 23,117 articles with comments |
All three datasets share the same identifier conventions used by the
existing perfume/brand/perfumer databases:
- **PID** (`int32`) — unique perfume identifier; matches `merged_database.PID`.
- **NID** (`int32`) — unique news article identifier (1..26385 range).
- **lang** (`string`) — ISO 639-1 language code identifying which Fragrantika
domain the content was sourced from. Each domain hosts independent
user-generated content (reviews are not translations of one another).
---
## 2. Dataset 1: `comments.parquet`
User-written reviews of individual perfumes, scraped across 23 localized
Fragrantika domains. Each comment is a unique user review, not a translation
or syndication.
### 2.1 Schema (8 fields)
| # | Field | Type | NULL? | Description |
|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | `pid` | `int32` | NO | Foreign key → `merged_database.PID`. Identifies the perfume being reviewed. |
| 2 | `lang` | `string` | NO | Domain language (`en`, `ru`, `de`, …). 23 distinct values. |
| 3 | `comment_id` | `string` | NO | Globally unique deterministic ID, format `{pid}_{lang}_{12hex}` where `12hex` is the first 12 hexadecimal characters of `sha1(author + "|" + date + "|" + text)`. Stable across re-scrapes. |
| 4 | `author` | `string` | NO | Username as displayed on Fragrantika. May contain Unicode (e.g. `José`, `Søren`, `李明`). |
| 5 | `date` | `string` | NO | Date published as it appears on the page. Most rows: `MM/DD/YY HH:MM` (e.g., `04/11/26 10:05`). Always present. |
| 6 | `text` | `large_string` (64-bit offsets) | NO | Review body. UTF-8, no HTML tags, paragraph breaks via `\n`. May contain emoji. Length range observed: 1 char (emoji-only) to ~120 KB. |
| 7 | `avatar_url` | `string` | NO | Full URL to the user's avatar image hosted on Fragrantika's CDN. Verified ~100% reachable. |
| 8 | `gradient_class` | `string` | NO | Fragrantika's CSS class for the user's color badge (e.g., `tw-gradient-rose`). 7 distinct values observed (`tw-gradient-amber`/`emerald`/`orange`/`rose`/`sky`/`teal`/`violet`). Useful for UI consistency if displaying. |
### 2.2 Volumetrics
- **Total rows:** 5,024,093
- **Distinct PIDs covered:** 98,252 — 98,240 of the 142,676 perfumes in `fragrances.csv` (68.9%), plus 12 perfumes no longer in the catalogue; the remaining 44,436 perfumes have zero reviews
- **PID range:** 1 — 145,291
- **Languages:** 23 (full list in §2.3)
### 2.3 Language distribution
| Lang | Code | Comments | Distinct PIDs |
|---|---|---:|---:|
| English | `en` | 1,914,933 | 81,642 (57% of perfumes) |
| Russian | `ru` | 938,870 | 55,094 |
| Portuguese (Brazilian) | `pt` | 283,681 | 23,258 |
| Spanish | `es` | 245,951 | 28,294 |
| Korean | `ko` | 215,074 | 11,707 |
| Turkish | `tr` | 192,846 | 11,820 |
| Japanese | `ja` | 188,341 | 10,846 |
| Polish | `pl` | 154,223 | 27,026 |
| Italian | `it` | 126,169 | 23,488 |
| Serbian | `sr` | 110,402 | 15,348 |
| Hungarian | `hu` | 109,532 | 11,568 |
| Swedish | `sv` | 108,006 | 11,166 |
| German | `de` | 101,525 | 15,749 |
| Hebrew | `he` | 83,236 | 10,257 |
| Ukrainian | `uk` | 53,175 | 16,523 |
| French | `fr` | 48,534 | 14,510 |
| Arabic | `ar` | 37,302 | 9,818 |
| Greek | `el` | 29,626 | 8,838 |
| Czech | `cs` | 24,435 | 3,468 |
| Chinese (Simplified) | `zh` | 16,017 | 4,585 |
| Dutch | `nl` | 15,442 | 6,682 |
| Romanian | `ro` | 14,632 | 6,648 |
| Mongolian | `mn` | 12,141 | 2,062 |
Each `lang` represents an independent set of user reviews from the
corresponding national Fragrantika domain. A user reviewing the same
perfume on `fragrantica.com` (en) and `fragrantica.ru` (ru) would write
two distinct reviews; both are included.
### 2.4 ID generation
`comment_id` is content-derived (sha1-based), giving three properties:
- **Globally unique** across all 5.0M rows (0 collisions in v5.19).
- **Stable across re-scrapes**: re-fetching the same comment yields the same
ID. Useful for incremental updates and joining with downstream tables.
- **Idempotent dedup key**: `(nid, comment_id)` and `comment_id` alone are
both safe primary keys.
---
## 3. Dataset 2: `news.parquet`
Editorial articles from `fragrantica.com/news/` (English-only). Covers the
entire archive 2008-2026 (NID 1..26385), including both archived legacy
articles and modern editorial content.
### 3.1 Schema (16 fields)
| # | Field | Type | NULL? | Description |
|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | `nid` | `int32` | NO | News article ID. Range 1..26385. |
| 2 | `title` | `string` | NO | Article title. Plain text, HTML entities decoded. |
| 3 | `category` | `string` | NO | Editorial category (e.g., `New Fragrances`, `Fragrance Reviews`, `Interviews`). 30+ distinct values. Top 10 in §3.4. |
| 4 | `author` | `string` | YES | Comma-separated list of author names (multi-author articles common). |
| 5 | `description` | `string` | YES | Short summary from ``. Plain text. |
| 6 | `text` | `string` | NO | Full article body. Plain text, paragraph breaks via `\n`. Footer/byline blocks stripped. UTF-8. |
| 7 | `text_html` | `string` | NO | Article body **with original HTML preserved** — `
`, ``, `
`, embedded videos. Useful for rendering or DOM-aware downstream processing. |
| 8 | `main_image` | `string` | YES | URL to the article's primary image (Fragrantika CDN). Verified reachable. |
| 9 | `article_images` | `string` | NO | **JSON-encoded array** of all image URLs in the article body. Use `json.loads(field)` → `list[str]`. Empty array `'[]'` if none. |
| 10 | `url` | `string` | NO | Canonical article URL (e.g., `https://www.fragrantica.com/news/x-12345.html`). |
| 11 | `is_archived` | `bool` | NO | `True` if article is in Fragrantika's legacy/archived corpus (older HTML template, often missing publication date — see §3.5). |
| 12 | `related_pids` | `string` | NO | **JSON-encoded array** of PIDs (as decimal strings) referenced in the article. Foreign key → `merged_database.PID`. 176 of 127,137 references (0.14%) point to perfumes no longer in the catalogue. |
| 13 | `related_brands` | `string` | NO | **JSON-encoded array** of brand names. Informational metadata; see §5.4 for canonical resolution. |
| 14 | `related_perfumers` | `string` | NO | **JSON-encoded array** of perfumer names with diacritics preserved (e.g., `François Demachy`, `Carlos Benaïm`). Informational; see §5.5. |
| 15 | `comments_count` | `int32` | NO | Count of comments in `news_comments.parquet` matching this NID. |
| 16 | `date_unix` | `int64` | NO | Publication time as Unix timestamp (seconds since epoch). `0` indicates the date is not extractable from the source HTML — see §3.5. |
### 3.2 Volumetrics
- **Total rows:** 25,875 articles
- **NID range:** 1 — 26,385 (510 NIDs in that range are absent from the source)
- **Archived:** 15,458 / 25,875 (59.7%)
- **Non-archived:** 10,417 / 25,875 (40.3%)
- **With publication date (`date_unix > 0`):** 15,089 (58.3%)
### 3.3 List-fields format note
Four fields hold lists: `article_images`, `related_pids`, `related_brands`,
`related_perfumers`. **All four are stored as JSON-encoded strings** for
consistency. Use:
```python
import json
images = json.loads(row['article_images']) # → list[str]
```
`related_pids` contains PID values as decimal strings (e.g., `'704'`, not
the int `704`). Cast as needed when joining.
### 3.4 Top categories
| Category | Articles | % |
|---|---:|---:|
| New Fragrances | 8,778 | 33.9% |
| Fragrance Reviews | 6,224 | 24.1% |
| Niche Perfumery | 2,622 | 10.1% |
| Art Books Events | 1,654 | 6.4% |
| Columns | 1,492 | 5.8% |
| Fragrant Horoscope | 877 | 3.4% |
| Fragrance News | 817 | 3.2% |
| Interviews | 693 | 2.7% |
| Vintages | 456 | 1.8% |
| Raw Materials | 397 | 1.5% |
Remaining 1,865 articles span 35 smaller categories.
### 3.5 Date coverage
`date_unix == 0` for 10,786 articles (41.7%). Distribution by NID range:
| NID range | Articles | with date | % | archived % |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| 1 — 5,000 | 4,898 | 2 | 0.0% | 100% |
| 5,001 — 10,000 | 4,803 | 0 | 0.0% | 100% |
| 10,001 — 15,000 | 4,905 | 3,837 | 78.2% | 100% |
| 15,001 — 20,000 | 4,915 | 4,915 | 100% | 17.3% |
| 20,001 — 25,000 | 4,971 | 4,971 | 100% | 0% |
| 25,001 — 26,385 | 1,383 | 1,364 | 98.6% | 0% |
Of the 10,786 articles without date, 10,767 come from the archived legacy
template: 9,699 in NIDs 1–10,000 (all but 2 of the 9,701 there) and 1,068 in
NIDs 10,001–15,000 (the remaining 22% of that range — the other 78% have
recoverable visible-text dates). Fragrantika's old archived HTML does not
embed any date marker (no `