AnkiOrg

AnkiOrg is an add-on to Emacs anki-editor which can pull notes from Anki, convert them to anki-editor’s org representation of an Anki note, and insert them into an org-mode buffer. It provides two ways of interfacing with Anki: either via Anki-Connect or by more directly accessing the Anki SQL database using emacs-sqlite3-api (this can be faster and works when Anki is not running). The html notes returned by Anki are converted to org using pandoc.

Currently, the code is still a bit messy (TODO), but I’ve been successfully using this to export all my existing Anki decks to org when migrating to anki-editor. From that moment on I’ve been managing all my Anki notes from Emacs using anki-editor. It works great! In my Emacs-Anki workflow, I also make use of org-transclusion for providing card context and math-preview for previewing MathJax equations.

Since I started working on this, org-anki has emerged as a feasible alternative to anki-editor (whose original repository is unmaintained) and the pull features provided in this package. However, org-anki does not provide all the features of anki-editor and AnkiOrg, so this might still be an alternative worth exploring. (TODO: Write more detailed comparison.)

Installation

First install the following dependencies outside Emacs: Emacs, Anki, Anki-Connect, curl, and pandoc. Make sure curl and pandoc are in the path used by Emacs. Optionally, to use the SQLite interface you also need emacs-sqlite3-api.

Note: Not all versions of Anki/Anki-Connect may work. Versions which have been tested and work include Anki version 2.1.54 and Anki-Connect version 22.7.14.0.

Next, you need my fork of anki-editor, orgtre/anki-editor. The difference to the original louietan/anki-editor is that I merged the develop branch and made a few minor adjustments (e.g. to allow a more flexible note structure).

Finally, you should now have all dependencies and can install this package in whatever way you like.

I use the following to install this package and the other necessary Emacs packages with straight.el:

(use-package sqlite3
  :straight (:host github :repo "pekingduck/emacs-sqlite3-api"))

(use-package anki-editor  
  :straight (:host github :repo "orgtre/anki-editor")
  :commands anki-editor-mode
  :custom (anki-editor-latex-style 'mathjax))

(use-package ankiorg
  :straight (:host github :repo "orgtre/ankiorg")
  :commands
  ankiorg-pull-notes
  ankiorg-buffer-get-media-files
  ankiorg-pull-tags
  :custom
  (ankiorg-sql-database
   "my-path-to/collection.anki2")
  (ankiorg-media-directory
   "my-path-to/img"))

Usage

From an org buffer, run the command ankiorg-pull-notes and select the deck you want to pull. (TODO: Write function to pull all decks.) The org representations of the Anki notes will be inserted into the buffer. Next run command ankiorg-buffer-get-media-files from the same buffer to get the media files linked in the buffer from Anki and save them to your ankiorg-media-directory. (TODO: Make this one call.)

To use the SQL interface, enable ankiorg-sql-minor-mode. It is strongly recommended that you work with a (recent) copy of your Anki SQL database, whose path needs to be set in ankiorg-sql-database. Anki and Anki-Connect need to be running when using the Anki-Connect interface, and (for now) also when retrieving media files. (TODO: Allow retrieving media files via the SQL interface too.) (TODO: Write a detailed usage example.)

Limitations and known issues

ankiorg-pull-notes is not a perfect inverse of anki-editor-push-notes. The main issue is that some line breaks are not properly preserved. I use a bunch of regex’s in the output buffer to correct for most of this. (TODO: Integrate these into the package and fix this better.)

Also, if you use Anki’s mini-format-pack add-on, there is an unfixed bug in it which causes pandoc to parse nested lists incorrectly. The default regex replacement in the variable ankiorg-anki-replacements should correct for this up to one level of nesting, but not further.

Pull requests, issue reports, and suggestions are most welcome! To encourage contributions, I have used the TODO keyword for marking some outstanding tasks both in this readme and the source code.