apy

Anki is a flash card program which makes remembering things easy. apy is a Python script for easily adding cards to Anki. It does not require Anki to be running at the same time.

Important

• This script and its author(s) are not affiliated/associated with the main Anki project in any way.
• Use this software entirely at your own risk. Frequent backups are encouraged.

Table of Contents

• Install instructions
• Usage
• Configuration
• Zsh completion
• Changelog
• Relevant resources
• Alternatives

Install instructions

apy can be installed in the "usual" way with pip:

pip install apyanki

However, note that installing Python packages outside virtual environments is not recommended, even at the user level! If you do this, then be aware that you may experience issues due to conflicts with other packages/tools installed in the same manner.

Instead, the best way to install apy for normal usage is with pipx. This will ensure apy doesn't interfere with other Python packages already on your system.

If you don't already have pipx, install it with your distribution's package manager. For instance, on Ubuntu:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install pipx

Then, install apy with:

pipx install apyanki

Requirements

apy should work for Python 3.9 and later.

Technically, apy does not depend on any existing Anki installation, since it pulls in a copy of the non-GUI components of Anki as a separate dependency. However, you still need to have an Anki database with collections and profile settings already existing on your machine, since apy can't create one from nothing.

Usage

apy --help

Some examples:

# Add card with interactive editor session
apy add

# Add single card with specified preset (see configuration for more info on
# presets)
apy add-single -s preset "Question/Front" "Answer/Back"

# List leech cards (will show cid values for each card). Note that the query
# should be similar to a search query in the Anki browser.
apy list -v tag:leech

# Review and possibly edit file with given cid
apy review cid:12345678

apy can be combined with editor specific configuration and workflows to improve the process of adding and editing cards. For more information about this, see the Wiki.

Configuration

apy loads configuration from ~/.config/apy/apy.json. The following keys are currently recognized:

• base_path: Specify where apy should look for your Anki database. This is usually something like /home/your_name/.local/share/Anki2/.
• img_viewers: Specify a dictionary of image viewer commands. Each key is a file extension. The value is a command list, e.g. ['display', 'density', '300'] which specifies the command and its options to use for the corresponding key (file extension).
• img_viewers_default: Specify the default command to show an image. Must be provided as a list of the command and desired options, such as ['feh', '-d'].
• markdown_models: Specify a list of models for which apy will use a markdown converter.
• markdown_pygments_style: Specify the code highlight scheme to use for fenced code blocks in Markdown notes. See the Pygments documentation for more details.
• pngCommands/svgCommands: Set LaTeX commands to generate PNG/SVG files. This is inspired by the Edit LaTeX build process addon to Anki.
• presets: Specify preset combination of model and tags for use with apy add-single.
• profile_name: Specify which profile to load by default.
• query: Specify default query for apy list, apy review and apy tag.
• review_show_cards: Whether to show list of cards by default during note review

An example configuration:

{
  "base_path": "/home/your_name/.local/share/Anki2/",
  "profile_name": "MyAnkiProfile",
  "query": "tag:leech",
  "presets": {
    "default": { "model": "Custom", "tags": ["marked"] }
  },
  "pngCommands": [
    ["latex", "-interaction=nonstopmode", "tmp.tex"],
    ["dvipng", "-D", "150", "-T", "tight", "-bg", "Transparent",
      "tmp.dvi", "-o", "tmp.png"]
  ],
  "svgCommands": [
    ["lualatex", "-interaction=nonstopmode", "tmp.tex"],
    ["pdfcrop", "tmp.pdf", "tmp.pdf"],
    ["pdf2svg", "tmp.pdf", "tmp.svg"]
  ],
  "review_show_cards": true
}

Zsh completion

There is also a zsh completion file available. To use it, one may symlink or copy it to a location that is already in ones fpath variable, or one may add the apy/completion directory to the fpath list.

As an example, one may first symlink the _apy file:

mkdir -p ~/.local/zsh-functions
ln -s /path/to/apy/completion/_apy ~/.local/zsh-functions

Then add the following line to ones .zshrc file:

fpath=($HOME/.local/zsh-functions $fpath)

Changelog

See the release history on GitHub. For details, feel free to inspect the commity history.

Relevant resources

Here are a list of relevant resources for learning how to work with the Anki databases and code:

• AnkiDroid: Database Structure
• AnkiConnect.py
• The Anki Manual

Alternatives

Here are some alternatives to apy from which I've drawn inspiration. I've also added a short note on why I did not just settle for the alternative.

Ankiconnect

Ankiconnect is an Anki plugin 2055492159) hosted on github.

Ankiconnect enables external applications to communicate with Anki over a network interface. The exposed API makes it possible to execute queries against the user’s card deck, automatically create new vocabulary and Kanji flash cards, and more.

A couple of relevant applications that use Ankiconnect:

• Anki Quick Adder: A Chrome extension to add words to Anki desktop quickly.

• Anki-editor is an emacs plugin for making Anki cards with Org.

• anki-cli is a simple nodejs based command-line interface for Anki.

• trrc is a command-line program to add a card to Anki using AnkiConnect API.

The Dealbreaker: I wanted a script that does not require Anki to be running.

Anki::Import - Anki note generation made easy

Anki::Import (see also here) allows one to "Efficiently generate Anki notes with your text editor for easy import into Anki". Quote:

Inputting notes into Anki can be a tedious chore. Anki::Import lets you you generate Anki notes with your favorite text editor (e.g. vim, BBEdit, Atom, etc.) so you can enter formatted notes into Anki's database more efficiently.

The Dealbreaker: This sounds very good, except there are too many steps. I didn't want to have to open Anki desktop. It should work flawlessly directly from the terminal.

AnkiVim

AnkiVim may be used to "Use vim to rapidly write textfiles immediately importable into anki(1)."

The Dealbreaker: Similar to Anki::Import: I didn't want to have to open Anki desktop. It should work flawlessly directly from the terminal.

Knowledge (Vim plugin)

Knowledge is a Vim plugin for generating flash cards to either Anki or Mnemosyne.

The Dealbreaker: It has a single, open issue, which seems to indicate that the application does not work very well and/or is not well maintained.

Ankisync

Ankisync seems somewhat promising, in that it exposes an API for working with Anki collections from Python. It is a successor to AnkiTools, which is stated to be "an Anki *.apkg and collection.anki2 reader and editor".

The Dealbreaker: It does not include any features to add or edit notes (as far as I could tell).

Genanki

Genanki is a library for generating Anki decks.

The Dealbreaker: It is quite close to being something I wanted, except that it needs to run as a plugin to Anki desktop to generate notes to a local collection. It does not seem to allow editing/adding to a local collection outside of Anki desktop.

inka

inka is a CLI utility for adding flashcards from Markdown files to Anki.

The Dealbreaker: This did not exist when apy was created. It seems to be close to what I would personally be interested in, but today I find apy solves all (or most) of my requirements. Also, inka requires the AnkiConnect plugin.

Obsidian_to_Anki

Obsidian_to_Anki is a plugin to add flashcards from a text or markdown file to Anki. It can also be run from the command-line as a python script. Built with Obsidian markdown syntax in mind.

The Dealbreaker: Requires AnkiConnect.

Markdown2Anki

Markdown2Anki is a Python script that allows you to easily format your cards using Markdown syntax, and then import them into Anki while retaining the structure you gave them.

As many other alternatives, you need to manually import cards. It may provide support for AnkiConnect.

Contributing

The following is a short and simple guide to getting started with contributing and developing the apy code.

Setup

This project uses Poetry as the build system and to manage dependencies.

Install Poetry first if you don't have it already. Fork the repository, then clone your fork and install a local development build of the project using Poetry.

# Clone the forked repo
git clone git@github.com:<username>/apy.git
cd apy/

# Install the project with Poetry
poetry install

Poetry will create a virtual environment for you (see here for where the environment is created). You can either activate this environment yourself then issue commands in the usual way, or you can prefix your commands with poetry run. Example:

poetry run apy --version

Tests

To run the tests, activate the virtual environment and run:

pytest

Alternatively, without activating the environment:

poetry run pytest

Linting

To format the code, run:

poetry run black .

To type-check the code, run:

poetry run mypy src