Accessing the Anki database with Python: Working with a specific deck

Anki

I previously wrote about accessing the Anki database using Python on mac OS. Extending that post, I’ll show how to work with a specific deck in this short post.

To use a named deck you’ll need its deck ID. Fortunately there’s a built-in method for finding a deck ID by name:

col = Collection(COLLECTION_PATH)
dID = col.decks.id(DECK_NAME)

Now in queries against the cards and notes tables we can apply the deck ID to restrict them to a certain deck. For example, to find all of the cards currently in the learning stage:

query = """SELECT COUNT(id) FROM cards where type = 1 AND did = dID"""
learningCards = col.db.scalar(query)

print 'There are {:.5g} learning cards.'.format(learningCards)

And close the collection: 

col.close()

See also:

Working with the Anki database on mac OS using Python

Anki

Not long ago I ran across this post detailing a method for opening and inspecting the Anki database using Python outside the Anki application environment. However, the approach requires linking to the Anki code base which is inaccessible on mac OS since the Python code is packaged into a Mac app on this platform.

The solution I’ve found is inelegant; but just involves downloading the Anki code base to a location on your file system where you can link to it in your code. You can find the Anki code here on github.

Once that’s done, you’re ready to load an Anki collection. First, the preliminaries:

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys

#   paths
ANKI_PATH = 'path to where you downloaded the anki codebase'
COLLECTION_PATH = "path to the Anki collection"

sys.path.append(ANKI_PATH)
from anki import Collection

Now we’re ready to open the collection:

col = Collection(COLLECTION_PATH)

And execute a simple query to print out the total number of cards in the collection: 

query = """SELECT COUNT(id) from cards"""
totalCards = col.db.scalar(query)

print 'There are {:.5g} total cards.'.format(totalCards)

Then close the collection: 

col.close()

That’s it. Ideally, we’d be able to link to the Anki code bundled with the Mac application. Maybe there’s a way. In the meanwhile, here’s the entire little app:

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys

#   paths
ANKI_PATH = '/Users/alan/Documents/dev/projects/PersonalProjects/anki'
COLLECTION_PATH = "/Users/alan/Documents/Anki/Alan - Russian/collection.anki2"

sys.path.append(ANKI_PATH)
from anki import Collection

col = Collection(COLLECTION_PATH)

query = """SELECT COUNT(id) from cards"""
totalCards = col.db.scalar(query)

print 'There are {:.5g} total cards.'.format(totalCards)

col.close()

Process automation in building Anki vocabulary cards

Anki

For the last two years, I’ve been working through a 10,000 word Russian vocabulary ordered by frequency. I have a goal of finishing the list before the end of 2019. This requires not only stubborn persistence but an efficient process of collecting the information that goes onto my Anki flash cards.

My manual process has been to work from a Numbers spreadsheet. As I collect information about each word from several websites, I log it in this table.

Read more…

More Javascript with Anki

Anki

I wrote a piece previously about using JavaScript in Anki cards. Although I haven’t found many uses for employing this idea, it does come up from time-to-time including a recent use-case I’m writing about now.

After downloading a popular French frequency list deck for my daughter to use, I noticed that it omits the gender of nouns in the French prompt. In school, I was always taught to memorize the gender along with the noun. For example, when you memorize the word for law, “loi” you should mermorize it with either the definite article “la” or the indefinite article “une” so that the feminine gender of the noun is inseparable from the noun itself. But this deck has only the noun prompt and I was afraid that my daughter would fail to memorize the noun’s gender. JavaScript to the rescue.

Read more…

An approach to dealing with spurious sensor data in Indigo

Home Automation

Spurious sensor data can wreak havoc in an otherwise finely-tuned home automation system. I use temperature data from an Aeotech Multisensor 6 to monitor the environment in our greenhouse. Living in Canada, I cannot rely solely on passive systems to maintain the temperature, particularly at night. So, using the temperature and humidity measurements transmitted back to the controller over Z-wave, I control devices inside the greenhouse that heat and humidify the environment.

Read more…

Follow the intent.

Politics

With Trump the usual advice of “Follow the money.” doesn’t work because Congress refuses to force him to disclose his conflicts of interest. As enormous and material as those conflicts must be, I’m just going to focus on what I can see with my own eyes, the man’s apparent intent.

In his public life, Donald Trump has never done anything that did not personally and directly benefit him. Most of us, as we go through life, assemble a collection of acts that are variously self-serving and other-serving. This is the way of life. Normal life. With Trump, not so. Even his meager philanthropic acts are tainted with controversy. The man simply cannot act in sacrificial way. He is incurable.^[In a campaign event in Fort Dodge, Iowa on November 12, 2015, Trump claimed that rival Ben Carson was “pathological” and that “…if you’re pathological, there’s no cure for that, folks, okay? There’s no cure for that.” Since Trump’s own psychopathology is widely questioned, one wonders if he, too, is incurable. Given that narcissistic personality disorder is almost certainly among the potential diagnoses, he probably is incurable.]

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They're just paid protesters

Politics
In an effort to strip protesters of their legitimacy, Trump and Fox News claim that protesters are simply there because they’re paid by powerful oppositional interests. Never mind that Trump has no evidence for his claim; he has no evidence for practically anything that emerges from his loud mouth. What is more interesting to me is that if money delegitimizes authenticity then presumably we can use this effect to come to additional conclusions.
Read more…

@realDonaldTrump Russian Twitter bot

Politics

Someday, when I have time to burn, I’m going to write a Twitter bot that takes all of Trump’s vacuous tweets and translate them into Russian. It’ll look like this:

There’s something ludicrous about the idea of the Trump, who is distractible, impatient, and incurious being able to learn Russian, an incredibly difficult language.

marking time

Politics

marking time,
eyes glazed, pupils constricted
to the head of a pin
from facing the blue white sterile light
for too long
a zombie tribe
numbering in the millions
if not more
waits.

this throng, agitated
in a subdued anesthetized
way,
crowns one of its own
a clown of sorts
knowing little of the past
less of the present
and practically nothing
of the future.
“why not? it could be worse."

in a strange unreality
a vaudeville show becomes
its own rehearsal,
a dreamish state from which
only an atomic flash
can awaken a person.