| # Fragrantica News & Comments Datasets — Technical Specification |
|
|
| **Snapshot date:** 2026-05-05 |
| **Source:** `fragrantica.com` and 22 localized domains (`fragrantica.de`, `fragrantica.ru`, etc.) |
| **Format:** Apache Parquet (Zstandard compression) |
| **Total combined size:** ~1.36 GB on disk |
|
|
| This document specifies three datasets that complement the existing |
| Fragrantica 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 Fragrantica |
| 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` | 4,643,851 | 1.23 GB | 93,305 perfumes, 23 languages | |
| | `news.parquet` | 24,440 articles | 101 MB | NID 1..25000 | |
| | `news_comments.parquet` | 263,798 | 33 MB | 21,820 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..25000 range). |
| - **lang** (`string`) — ISO 639-1 language code identifying which Fragrantica |
| 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 |
| Fragrantica 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 Fragrantica. May contain Unicode (e.g. `Сергей`, `José`). | |
| | 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 Fragrantica's CDN. Verified ~100% reachable. | |
| | 8 | `gradient_class` | `string` | NO | Fragrantica'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:** 4,643,851 |
| - **Distinct PIDs covered:** 93,305 (70.6% of the 132,160 perfumes in `merged_database`; remaining 38,855 perfumes have zero reviews — verified against Fragrantica's `reviews_count` field) |
| - **PID range:** 1 — 130,121 |
| - **Languages:** 23 (full list in §2.3) |
|
|
| ### 2.3 Language distribution |
|
|
| | Lang | Code | Comments | Distinct PIDs | |
| |---|---|---:|---:| |
| | English | `en` | 1,690,055 | 78,715 (60% of perfumes) | |
| | Russian | `ru` | 889,893 | 52,650 | |
| | Portuguese (Brazilian) | `pt` | 247,511 | 21,258 | |
| | Spanish | `es` | 226,451 | 26,586 | |
| | Korean | `ko` | 214,674 | 11,696 | |
| | Turkish | `tr` | 191,945 | 11,722 | |
| | Japanese | `ja` | 186,836 | 10,767 | |
| | Polish | `pl` | 141,242 | 25,350 | |
| | Italian | `it` | 115,972 | 22,100 | |
| | Hungarian | `hu` | 109,204 | 11,565 | |
| | Serbian | `sr` | 108,945 | 15,048 | |
| | Swedish | `sv` | 107,666 | 11,155 | |
| | German | `de` | 100,218 | 15,505 | |
| | Hebrew | `he` | 81,981 | 10,165 | |
| | Ukrainian | `uk` | 50,203 | 15,917 | |
| | French | `fr` | 42,256 | 13,379 | |
| | Arabic | `ar` | 33,077 | 9,071 | |
| | Greek | `el` | 28,208 | 8,512 | |
| | Czech | `cs` | 24,269 | 3,424 | |
| | Chinese (Simplified) | `zh` | 15,843 | 4,466 | |
| | Romanian | `ro` | 13,906 | 6,451 | |
| | Mongolian | `mn` | 12,100 | 2,056 | |
| | Dutch | `nl` | 11,396 | 5,045 | |
|
|
| Each `lang` represents an independent set of user reviews from the |
| corresponding national Fragrantica 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 4.6M rows (verified post-rewrite, 0 collisions). |
| - **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..25000), 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..25000. | |
| | 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 `<meta property="og:description">`. 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** — `<p>`, `<a>`, `<img>`, embedded videos. Useful for rendering or DOM-aware downstream processing. | |
| | 8 | `main_image` | `string` | YES | URL to the article's primary image (Fragrantica 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 Fragrantica'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`. 0% orphan rate (FK-validated). | |
| | 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:** 24,440 articles |
| - **NID range:** 1 — 25,000 (560 NIDs missing — Fragrantica returns HTTP 301 redirect for these — represents truly deleted articles) |
| - **Archived:** 15,427 / 24,440 (63.1%) |
| - **Non-archived:** 9,013 / 24,440 (36.9%) |
| - **With publication date (`date_unix > 0`):** 13,687 (56.0%) |
| |
| ### 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 | 8,534 | 34.9% | |
| | Fragrance Reviews | 5,583 | 22.8% | |
| | Niche Perfumery | 2,537 | 10.4% | |
| | Art Books Events | 1,570 | 6.4% | |
| | Columns | 1,346 | 5.5% | |
| | Fragrant Horoscope | 851 | 3.5% | |
| | Fragrance News | 760 | 3.1% | |
| | Interviews | 682 | 2.8% | |
| | Vintages | 437 | 1.8% | |
| | Raw Materials | 384 | 1.6% | |
| |
| Remaining 1,756 articles span 33 smaller categories. |
| |
| ### 3.5 Date coverage |
| |
| `date_unix == 0` for 10,753 articles (44%). Distribution by NID range: |
| |
| | NID range | Articles | with date | % | archived % | |
| |---|---:|---:|---:|---:| |
| | 1 — 5,000 | 4,888 | 2 | 0.0% | 100% | |
| | 5,001 — 10,000 | 4,799 | 0 | 0.0% | 100% | |
| | 10,001 — 15,000 | 4,890 | 3,822 | 78.2% | 100% | |
| | 15,001 — 20,000 | 4,900 | 4,900 | 100% | 17.3% | |
| | 20,001 — 25,000 | 4,963 | 4,963 | 100% | 0% | |
| |
| The 10,753 articles without date come entirely from the archived legacy |
| template: 9,685 in NIDs 1–10,000 (effectively all of them) and 1,068 in |
| NIDs 10,001–15,000 (the remaining 22% of that range — the other 78% have |
| recoverable visible-text dates). Fragrantica's old archived HTML does not |
| embed any date marker (no `<time>`, no `<meta>`, no visible date string) |
| for these. This is an upstream HTML limitation, not a parser issue. |
| **For all non-archived articles (9,013 of them), `date_unix` is 100% |
| populated.** |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 4. Dataset 3: `news_comments.parquet` |
| |
| User comments under news articles. Pure UGC; same comment-card schema |
| Fragrantica uses on perfume pages. |
| |
| ### 4.1 Schema (9 fields) |
| |
| | # | Field | Type | NULL? | Description | |
| |---:|---|---|---|---| |
| | 1 | `nid` | `int32` | NO | Foreign key → `news.parquet.nid` (0% orphan rate). | |
| | 2 | `comment_id` | `string` | NO | Comment ID as Fragrantica assigns it (page-anchor format). Globally unique within parquet. | |
| | 3 | `author` | `string` | NO | Commenter username. | |
| | 4 | `date` | `string` | NO | Date as displayed on page (e.g., `04/11/26 10:05`). | |
| | 5 | `date_unix` | `int64` | NO | Parsed Unix timestamp. **100% populated** (all rows have `date_unix > 0`). | |
| | 6 | `text` | `string` | NO | Comment body, plain text. | |
| | 7 | `avatar_url` | `string` | NO | Full URL to author avatar (Fragrantica CDN). | |
| | 8 | `gradient` | `string` | NO | CSS class for color badge (same scheme as `comments.parquet.gradient_class`). | |
| | 9 | `is_reply` | `bool` | NO | `True` if this comment is a reply to another comment (threaded discussion); `False` for root comments. 4.9% of rows are replies (12,898 / 263,798). | |
|
|
| ### 4.2 Volumetrics |
|
|
| - **Total rows:** 263,798 |
| - **Distinct NIDs:** 21,820 (89.3% of articles have at least one comment) |
| - **Replies:** 12,898 (4.9%) |
| - **Average comments per article (in articles with comments):** 12.1 |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## 5. Cross-dataset relationships |
|
|
| This section is the load-bearing piece for buyers integrating with the |
| existing perfume/brand/perfumer DBs. |
|
|
| ### 5.1 Diagram |
|
|
| ``` |
| ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ |
| │ merged_database.csv (existing, 132,160 perfumes) │ |
| │ ───────────────────── │ |
| │ PID ←──────────────────────┐ │ |
| │ Brand │ │ |
| │ Name │ │ |
| │ noses_f (perfumers) │ │ |
| │ ...30 fields total │ │ |
| └────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────┘ |
| │ |
| ┌────────────────┴───────────────┐ |
| │ │ |
| ▼ ▼ |
| ┌──────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────┐ |
| │ comments.parquet │ │ news.parquet │ |
| │ ──────────────────── │ │ ──────────────────── │ |
| │ pid ─────────────►│ │ related_pids ───────►│ |
| │ lang (23 langs) │ │ related_brands │ |
| │ comment_id (sha1) │ │ related_perfumers │ |
| │ author/date/text │ │ nid ◄────┐ │ |
| │ +avatar/gradient │ │ ...16 fields total │ |
| └──────────────────────┘ └──────────┼───────────┘ |
| │ |
| │ |
| ┌──────────┴───────────┐ |
| │ news_comments.parquet│ |
| │ ──────────────────── │ |
| │ nid ─────────────────│ FK → news.nid |
| │ comment_id │ |
| │ author/date/text │ |
| │ is_reply │ |
| └──────────────────────┘ |
| ``` |
|
|
| ### 5.2 Linking comments to perfumes (PID) |
|
|
| Foreign key: **`comments.pid → merged_database.PID`** — verified 0% orphan rate. |
| |
| ```sql |
| -- All English reviews for the perfume "Mugler Angel" (PID 704): |
| SELECT c.author, c.date, c.text |
| FROM read_parquet('comments.parquet') c |
| JOIN read_csv('merged_database.csv', delim='⏸') m ON c.pid = m.PID |
| WHERE m.Brand = 'Mugler' AND m.Name = 'Angel' AND c.lang = 'en' |
| ORDER BY c.date DESC LIMIT 100; |
| ``` |
| |
| ```python |
| import pyarrow.parquet as pq |
| import pyarrow.compute as pc |
| |
| c = pq.read_table('comments.parquet') |
| angel_reviews = c.filter(pc.and_(pc.equal(c['pid'], 704), |
| pc.equal(c['lang'], 'en'))) |
| ``` |
| |
| ### 5.3 Linking news to perfumes (related_pids) |
| |
| Foreign key: **`news.related_pids → merged_database.PID`** — JSON-array |
| field, 0% orphan rate over 119,662 references. |
|
|
| ```sql |
| -- All news mentioning Aventus (PID 9828): |
| SELECT nid, title, category, date_unix |
| FROM read_parquet('news.parquet') |
| WHERE list_contains(json_extract(related_pids, '$'), '9828'); |
| ``` |
|
|
| ```python |
| import json |
| n = pq.read_table('news.parquet') |
| mentions_aventus = [] |
| for i, rp in enumerate(n.column('related_pids').to_pylist()): |
| if rp and '9828' in json.loads(rp): |
| mentions_aventus.append(i) |
| ``` |
|
|
| ### 5.4 Linking news to brands |
|
|
| `news.related_brands` is a **JSON array of brand-name strings** (informational). |
|
|
| **Authoritative brand resolution** for any news article uses the PID: |
| ``` |
| news.related_pids → merged_database.PID → merged_database.Brand |
| ``` |
|
|
| The `related_brands` field is provided as supplementary metadata. Approx. |
| 12% of strings in `related_brands` will not match `brands_database_v2.name` |
| exactly because Fragrantica has renamed some brands over time |
| (e.g., `Christian Dior` → `Dior`, `Annick Goutal` → `Goutal`, |
| `Paco Rabanne` → `Rabanne`). The original captured name is preserved. |
|
|
| For canonical brand lookup, always join via `related_pids`: |
|
|
| ```sql |
| SELECT DISTINCT m.Brand |
| FROM read_parquet('news.parquet') n |
| JOIN read_csv('merged_database.csv', delim='⏸') m |
| ON list_contains(json_extract(n.related_pids, '$'), CAST(m.PID AS VARCHAR)) |
| WHERE n.nid = 17644; |
| ``` |
|
|
| ### 5.5 Linking news to perfumers |
|
|
| Same pattern as brands. `news.related_perfumers` is a **JSON array of perfumer-name |
| strings** with diacritics preserved (e.g., `François Demachy`, `Carlos Benaïm`, |
| `Cécile Zarokian` — verified canonical post-fix). |
|
|
| **Authoritative perfumer resolution** uses PID: |
| ``` |
| news.related_pids → merged_database.PID → merged_database.noses_f |
| ``` |
|
|
| `merged_database.noses_f` contains the full list of perfumers per perfume in |
| the project's standard format. Approximately 11% of `related_perfumers` |
| strings will not exactly match `perfumers_database_v2.name` due to the |
| upstream perfumer DB not yet covering all names mentioned in news (e.g., |
| `Jean Claude Ellena` ×191 mentions). Use the PID-join for guaranteed |
| matches. |
|
|
| ### 5.6 Linking news_comments to articles (NID) |
| |
| Foreign key: **`news_comments.nid → news.nid`** — 0% orphan rate. |
| |
| ```sql |
| -- All comments under article NID 17644: |
| SELECT author, date, text, is_reply |
| FROM read_parquet('news_comments.parquet') |
| WHERE nid = 17644 |
| ORDER BY date_unix ASC; |
| ``` |
| |
| ### 5.7 Combined query examples |
| |
| **Q1.** All news articles + their root comments mentioning Creed Aventus |
| (PID 9828) in 2024: |
| |
| ```sql |
| SELECT n.nid, n.title, n.date_unix, nc.author, nc.text |
| FROM read_parquet('news.parquet') n |
| LEFT JOIN read_parquet('news_comments.parquet') nc ON n.nid = nc.nid |
| WHERE list_contains(json_extract(n.related_pids, '$'), '9828') |
| AND n.date_unix BETWEEN 1704067200 AND 1735689599 -- 2024 |
| AND nc.is_reply = false |
| ORDER BY n.date_unix DESC, nc.date_unix ASC; |
| ``` |
| |
| **Q2.** Top-10 most-reviewed perfumes by language: |
| |
| ```sql |
| SELECT lang, pid, COUNT(*) AS review_count |
| FROM read_parquet('comments.parquet') |
| GROUP BY lang, pid |
| QUALIFY ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY lang ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC) <= 10; |
| ``` |
| |
| **Q3.** Sentiment correlation between news articles and reviews — pairs of |
| (news article, perfume reviewed in same time window): |
| |
| ```sql |
| SELECT n.nid, n.title, m.Brand, m.Name, COUNT(c.comment_id) AS reviews_in_30d |
| FROM read_parquet('news.parquet') n |
| JOIN read_csv('merged_database.csv', delim='⏸') m |
| ON list_contains(json_extract(n.related_pids, '$'), CAST(m.PID AS VARCHAR)) |
| JOIN read_parquet('comments.parquet') c |
| ON c.pid = m.PID |
| WHERE n.date_unix > 0 |
| AND c.date_unix BETWEEN n.date_unix AND n.date_unix + 2592000 -- 30 days |
| GROUP BY n.nid, n.title, m.Brand, m.Name; |
| ``` |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## 6. Format specification |
| |
| ### 6.1 Storage |
| |
| - **Container:** Apache Parquet 2.x |
| - **Compression:** Zstandard (`zstd`) |
| - **Row groups:** |
| - `comments.parquet` — 5 row groups |
| - `news.parquet` — 1 row group |
| - `news_comments.parquet` — 1 row group |
| |
| ### 6.2 String types |
| |
| PyArrow uses two string types: |
| - `string` — backed by 32-bit offsets (per-array limit ~2 GB total). |
| - `large_string` — backed by 64-bit offsets (no practical size limit). |
| |
| `comments.parquet` uses `large_string` for the `text` column (because the |
| combined corpus of 4.6M reviews exceeds the 32-bit offset limit). All |
| other string columns in all three datasets use `string`. Pandas |
| automatically converts both to its native `object` dtype on load — buyers |
| generally do not need to distinguish between the two types unless writing |
| custom Arrow code. |
| |
| Exact field-level types are listed in the schema tables of §2.1, §3.1, §4.1. |
| |
| ### 6.3 Encoding |
| |
| - **Character encoding:** UTF-8 throughout. |
| - **Normalization:** NFC where applicable; original Unicode codepoints |
| preserved (including emoji). |
| - **Newlines:** `\n` only (Unix-style). No `\r`. |
| - **HTML entities:** decoded (no `&`, `<`, etc. in text fields). |
| - **Replacement chars (U+FFFD):** zero — rare upstream-broken bytes were |
| stripped, with the surrounding text preserved. |
| |
| ### 6.4 List fields (news.parquet) |
| |
| Four columns store JSON-encoded arrays-as-strings: |
| - `article_images`: `list[str]` of image URLs |
| - `related_pids`: `list[str]` of decimal-string PIDs |
| - `related_brands`: `list[str]` of brand names |
| - `related_perfumers`: `list[str]` of perfumer names |
| |
| Empty list is stored as the literal string `'[]'` (not NULL, not empty |
| string). This makes parsing branchless: |
| |
| ```python |
| items = json.loads(row[field]) # always returns a list |
| ``` |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## 7. Data quality |
| |
| The datasets passed a multi-track validation audit (full report: |
| `reports/data_quality/POST_FIX_VALIDATION.md`). Summary: |
| |
| | Check | Result | |
| |---|:---:| |
| | Duplicate rows by primary key (all 3 datasets) | 0 | |
| | FK integrity (`comments.pid → PID`) | 0 orphans | |
| | FK integrity (`news.related_pids → PID`) | 0 orphans (over 119,662 refs) | |
| | FK integrity (`news_comments.nid → nid`) | 0 orphans | |
| | `comment_id` global uniqueness (`comments.parquet`) | 0 collisions over 4.6M rows | |
| | HTML/CSS pollution in text fields | 0 | |
| | Cloudflare challenge pages in data | 0 | |
| | Mojibake / replacement char (U+FFFD) | 0 | |
| | Language attribution accuracy (langdetect on sample) | >95% per language | |
| | `news_comments.date_unix > 0` populated | 100% | |
| | `news.date_unix > 0` populated (non-archived) | 100% | |
| |
| ### 7.1 Provenance |
| |
| Data scraped via headless browser fingerprinting (chrome120 impersonation |
| through curl_cffi) over a residential proxy network. Each page was |
| individually fetched, parsed by a custom HTML parser, and post-processed |
| through a content sanitization pipeline. Re-scrapes are idempotent thanks |
| to deterministic comment IDs (§2.4). |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## 8. Known limitations (transparent disclosure) |
| |
| 1. **Archived news articles without dates (10,753 / 24,440 = 44%).** |
| Fragrantica's archived HTML template does not embed any date marker |
| (`<time>`, meta tag, or visible string). For these articles, `date_unix` |
| is `0`. The no-date subset is concentrated in NIDs 1–15,000: 9,685 of |
| 9,687 archived articles in NIDs 1–10,000 and 1,068 of 4,890 in NIDs |
| 10,001–15,000. (850 archived articles in NIDs 15,001–20,000 do have |
| dates.) **All non-archived articles (9,013 of them) have 100% date |
| coverage.** |
| |
| 2. **`related_brands` matching gap (~12%).** Fragrantica has renamed |
| ~50 brands over the years (e.g., `Christian Dior → Dior`); the captured |
| name in news may be the older form, while `brands_database_v2.csv` |
| carries only the canonical (post-rename) name. Use `related_pids` for |
| authoritative brand resolution (§5.4). |
| |
| 3. **`related_perfumers` matching gap (~11%).** Some perfumer names |
| referenced in news (e.g., `Jean Claude Ellena` ×191) are not yet in the |
| companion `perfumers_database_v2.csv`. The names in news are |
| diacritic-correct; the gap is in the reference DB coverage. Use |
| `related_pids → merged_database.noses_f` for authoritative resolution |
| (§5.5). |
| |
| 4. **Cross-language mirrored short comments (~0.014%).** Approximately |
| 650 short, identical-text comments appear in multiple languages |
| (e.g., a "5/10" rating posted by the same author on multiple subdomains). |
| These are real (Fragrantica's display behavior), not parser duplicates. |
| |
| 5. **Comments PID coverage gap.** 38,855 perfumes (29%) have zero comments |
| in any language. Verified against Fragrantica's `reviews_count` field: |
| 99.8% of these perfumes truly have zero reviews on the platform. A |
| targeted re-collection of the 73 PIDs flagged as `reviews_count > 0` |
| yet missing comments recovered 68 of them (305 new comments added); |
| the remaining 5 PIDs have `reviews_count > 0` in Fragrantica's metadata |
| but the page returns no review HTML — treated as upstream |
| metadata/page mismatch. |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## 9. Loading examples |
| |
| ### 9.1 Python (PyArrow + Pandas) |
| |
| ```python |
| import pyarrow.parquet as pq |
| import json |
|
|
| # Comments |
| comments = pq.read_table('comments.parquet') |
| df = comments.to_pandas() |
| print(df.head()) |
|
|
| # News list-field unpack |
| news = pq.read_table('news.parquet').to_pandas() |
| news['related_pids'] = news['related_pids'].apply(json.loads) |
| news['related_brands'] = news['related_brands'].apply(json.loads) |
| ``` |
| |
| ### 9.2 DuckDB (zero-copy SQL on Parquet) |
| |
| ```sql |
| -- Direct query, no import needed |
| SELECT lang, COUNT(*) FROM 'comments.parquet' GROUP BY lang ORDER BY 2 DESC; |
| |
| -- Multi-file join |
| SELECT n.title, COUNT(nc.comment_id) AS replies |
| FROM 'news.parquet' n |
| LEFT JOIN 'news_comments.parquet' nc ON n.nid = nc.nid AND nc.is_reply = true |
| GROUP BY n.nid, n.title HAVING replies > 10; |
| ``` |
| |
| ### 9.3 Polars |
| |
| ```python |
| import polars as pl |
| df = pl.read_parquet('comments.parquet') |
| df.filter(pl.col('lang') == 'en').head() |
| ``` |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## 10. Sample files |
| |
| The `samples/` directory contains three small Parquet files that |
| demonstrate the cross-dataset relationships using real production data: |
| |
| | File | Rows | Content | |
| |---|---:|---| |
| | `comments_sample.parquet` | 25 | Reviews of 5 popular perfumes (Mugler Angel, Guerlain Shalimar, Creed Aventus, JPG Le Male, Dior Poison), each in 5 languages (en/ru/de/es/fr). | |
| | `news_sample.parquet` | 20 | News articles that reference these 5 perfumes via `related_pids`. Diverse categories and archived/recent mix. | |
| | `news_comments_sample.parquet` | 20 | Comments from 7 of the news articles in `news_sample.parquet`, mix of root and replies. | |
| |
| The samples are produced by `scripts/build_sales_samples.py` and use the |
| **identical Parquet schema and Zstandard compression as the production |
| files** — buyers can verify their loading code against the samples before |
| committing to the full datasets. |
| |
| ### 10.1 Cross-link verification (using the samples) |
| |
| ```python |
| import pyarrow.parquet as pq |
| import json |
| |
| c = pq.read_table('samples/comments_sample.parquet') |
| n = pq.read_table('samples/news_sample.parquet') |
| nc = pq.read_table('samples/news_comments_sample.parquet') |
| |
| sample_pids = set(c.column('pid').to_pylist()) |
| print(f"Comment-sample PIDs: {sorted(sample_pids)}") |
| # {53, 218, 430, 704, 9828} |
| |
| # Find news rows that reference these PIDs: |
| for i, rp in enumerate(n.column('related_pids').to_pylist()): |
| pids = set(int(p) for p in json.loads(rp) if p.isdigit()) |
| if pids & sample_pids: |
| nid = n.column('nid').to_pylist()[i] |
| title = n.column('title').to_pylist()[i] |
| print(f" NID {nid} ({title[:60]}...) references PIDs {pids & sample_pids}") |
| |
| # All news_comments NIDs are subset of news_sample NIDs: |
| sample_nids = set(n.column('nid').to_pylist()) |
| nc_nids = set(nc.column('nid').to_pylist()) |
| assert nc_nids <= sample_nids, "FK integrity holds in samples" |
| print(f"\nAll news_comments_sample NIDs link back to news_sample: {nc_nids <= sample_nids}") |
| ``` |
| |
| Running this script on the supplied samples will print a verification |
| trace and confirm relational integrity. |
| |
| --- |
| |
| ## 11. Versioning and updates |
| |
| | Field | Value | |
| |---|---| |
| | Snapshot date | 2026-05-05 | |
| | Comments PID range | 1 — 130,121 | |
| | News NID range | 1 — 25,000 | |
| | Schema version | v1 (8 / 16 / 9 fields respectively) | |
| | Compression | zstd | |
| | Format | Parquet 2.x | |
| |
| Updates to these datasets are produced as full snapshots; incremental |
| diffs (per-PID / per-NID delta exports) are available on request. |
| |