# 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 `