codedict

A command-line dictionary for the developer who likes it organized.

Thanks to Adam for his awesome pull request which brings export and import functionality to codedict.

What is it?

codedict is a little command line tool designed to be your personal dictionary for programming / developing. It is entirely up to you how to organize and arrange it.
Lightweight and locally stored, you can create your own reference, documentation or dictionary for development with codedict.

codedict uses the classic Cookbook approach and adds additonal tag features. A typical codedict entry consists of 4 values:

• (programming) language - e.g. 'python'

• tags, seperated by semicolon - e.g. 'list methods;lists'

• problem - What do you want to do? - 'adding element to a list' for instance

• The solution - How do you accomplish that? - 'list.append(element)' for instance.
  solution can be anything, from complicated algorithms or code examples to simple one-liners like our add-to-list example since you can edit inside your favorite editor, where it is most comfortable.

How to use

Here are the elementary commands:

• codedict add

  • Basic, interactive, self-explaining way to add content to your codedict.

• codedict tags

  • Lists all tags for the given language and offers to display all entries associated with a certain tag.

• codedict edit

  • A shortcut for adding or editing content. You need to provide a language as well as a problem. If this combination already exists, you can edit the already exisiting solution. If not, a new entry will be created.

• codedict file

  • You can add a basically unlimited amount of content to your codedict at a time by reading from a file. Just follow the pattern of beginning every new element(vocabulary) with a '%' and following that up with 3 (tags, problem, solution in that order) sections, each enclosed by '|'. See the sample.png for an example.
    Content gets overwritten when adding new entries. So in case you messed something up - codedict rollback im sure will bring you to the point right before your last adding from file.

• codedict display

  • Displays content from your codedict. Either for an entire language or only for certain problems, which match the search pattern. When doing the latter, all problems starting with your input get matched (e.g. 'python foo' matches the problem foo as well as foobar for the language python).
    The output gets printed to console (if it isn't longer than 25 lines), to your pager or editor in table form. Afterwards you can do further operations, like updating the solution for example. See the section below for more information.

• codedict link

  • You can add links to your codedict. Provide an URL, give it a name (optionally, but recommended) and assign it to a certain language(optionally).

• codedict export file language and codedict import file

  • codedict allows you to export and import entries stored outside of your database for easy backup and storage.

When in doubt - codedict -h brings you to the help page.

I also wrote a blog entry with a complete walkthrough of codedict by example.

How to install

Clone the current revision of the repository with
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/BastiPaeltz/codedict.git

Run the install.sh inside the install directory, it's usage is:
install.sh [INSTALL_DIR] [EXE_DIR]

INSTALL_DIR and EXE_DIR:
You can specify a directory where the actual executable respectively the required libraries / source files will be placed. You won't require sudo rights to install if neither of those directories is in root land.

Requires python 2.7 interpreter

codedict on Windows

I tested codedict on Windows and the core program works on Windows shells (PowerShell etc.) and unix shells (git bash etc.). Just clone codedict and cd into the source folder. On Windows shells, you would run python.exe codedict, on unix shells just run ./codedict.
The problem is, I'm not a Windows guy and unfortunately have no clue how to make codedict runnable from anywhere.
It would be supercool, if someone of you, who knows how to work with Windows could help me out with this.

Troubleshooting / remaining options explained

• After displaying my table, I get prompted with:
  'Do you want to do more? Usage: INDEX [ATTRIBUTE] - Press ENTER to abort:'

Based on the table you can edit your codedict this way. Choose the entry you want to change by index. If you omit the attribute, you will be brought to your editor (for normal tables), where you can edit the solution - or for link tables, your browser will be opened on the entrie's URL.
ATTRIBUTE can be problem or tags for normal tables and
name or language for link tables.
You can also type del, if you want to delete an entry entirely.

• codedict doesn't work with my editor. I immediately see "Nothing changed". This has something to do with editors behaving differently in terms of how their executable gets invoked and how they deal with files they're currently working on.
  Set --wait to 'on' to solve this.

• codedict display has a -l and a -t option.

-l displays links in the same way like normal display does with dictionary entries. -t works a bit differently. It won't display tags (thats what codedict tags is for), but display all (dict) entries that match the pattern.

• codedict display "" "my_search_pattern"

One extra trick you can do - if you omit the language like above, entries get matched across languages. The command above would display all 'my_search_pattern' entries, no matter what language.

• What happens when I set problem additionally when adding from a file ?

By default the content of the file will be parsed like described in the related section above. When 'problem' is set, the file's content will not be parsed but instead set as the solution field (of that specified 'problem').

• How can I see my current configurations (editor etc.) ?

Just invoke the command you like without a value - e.g. codedict --editor

Shell auto completion

There are completion files provided for zsh and bash inside the shell completion folder.

License

MIT