AnkiHub

Anki addon for connecting to AnkiHub

• Installation
• A User Story
• What AnkiHub Doesn't Support (TODO)
• Development
• The Inner Workings of Anki

Copy everything from the src folder into the addons folder of your local Anki installation.

Bob wants to study from Alice's Anki deck called DeckA. Alice logs onto the AnkiHub plugin and uploads DeckA. Then, Bob logs onto the AnkiHub website and searches for DeckA. He subscribes to the deck and then opens his local installation of Anki (henceforth called "vanilla Anki"). He enters his AnkiHub credentials on the plugin login window.

After the plugin verifies his credentials, the backend of the plugin receives a list of his subscriptions from the server. Since one of these decks, DeckA, does not exist locally, the plugin imports DeckA using JSON data from the server. In addition, the plugin updates any subscribed decks that already exists locally.

At this point, the plugin finishes loading the deck viewer window, which shows every local and subscribed deck (including DeckA). Next to subscribed decks (which includes uploaded decks that Bob owns) is a "Disconnect" button; it forks the deck if Bob is subscribed to it but does not own it, and it no longer sends updates if Bob is the deck originator. Next to local decks that have not been uploaded, there is an "Upload" button. If Bob pushes the "Uplaod" button for one of his decks, the button then changes to a "Disconnect" button.

This script restarts Anki automatically for you every time you save the plugin.

You will need a file called ankiRestartPaths.txt in the same directory as windowsAnkiRestart. This file should specify the paths to the Anki executable, the plugin file, and the Anki addons folder. The last line should be the command to kill the Anki process. Below is an example:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Anki\anki.exe
C:\Users\Tyler\Documents\WashU 2015-2016\CSE 437\AnkiPlugin\src\ankiPlugin.py
C:\Users\Tyler\Documents\Anki\addons
TASKKILL /F /IM anki.exe

To run it, enter python windowsAnkiRestart.py on the command line from the same directory. Ctrl-C will stop it.

Every second, windowsAnkiRestart examines the timestamp of the "Date Modified" field for the file you specified. If that value is different from the timestamp it cached earlier, windowsAnkiRestart copies the file to the addons directory specified in aniRestartPaths.txt. Then, it executes the supplied kill command and then opens Anki using the supplied path to the Anki executable.

Official documentation is on Anki's website

Anki structures cards that allows for a lot of customization but which complicates AnkiHub. There are 4 concepts: notes, note types, templates, and card types.

Notes are the actual pieces information you want to learn. We colloquially call these "cards." For example, in a simple deck of English vocabulary, each vocab-definition pair would be a separate note.

Note types are Anki's way of modularizing note data. Each note type contains fields which define and standardize the information that each note contains. Fields are particularly useful for styling purposes (stay tuned). In the "Basic" (default) note type, there are two fields: "Front" and "Back". Likewise, continuing our example of an English vocab deck, we would define a note type called "Eng Vocab (Simple)" with two fields:"Word" and "Definition". Or, perhpas, we decide we also want to add the part of speech. We could then define a new note type (e.g. "Eng Vocab (Complex)") with 3 fields: "Word", "Part of Speech", "Definition".

Note that each field is guaranteed to be a string, but they may refer to multimedia files such as images or audio.

Templates use HTML to define where each field will be placed on the card.

Card types are essentially wrappers for templates and styling. Each card type contains one template for the front and one for the back of the card. It also contains CSS styling shared by both templates. Each note type can contain multiple card types (e.g. for studying both recall and recognition).

These screenshots are from a deck that uses a custom note type with multiple fields and 3 card types ("Recall", "Recognition", and "Comprehension"). As always, each card type contains 2 templates and CSS styling.