Command line application that focus on creating decks of flashcards quickly and easily.
Flascards is a small CLI Study tools. It focuses on creating decks of flashcards easily and quickly.
The reason I developped this application is because I wanted to write flashcards during my classes, so that I didn't have to write them in my spare time. Unfortunately, writing them on papers is long and on top of taking physical space, costs money.
I used to use the Quizlet services, but it requires an internet connection. Also, using the Quizlet mobile app offline didnt fit for me because I find it annoying to write cards on my phone.
That is why I created flashcards.
Flashcards definition from wikipedia:
A flashcard or flash card is a set of cards bearing information, as words or numbers, on either or both sides, used in classroom drills or in private study.
One writes a question on a card and an answer overleaf. Flashcards can bear vocabulary, historical dates, formulas or any subject matter that can be learned via a question-and-answer format. Flashcards are widely used as a learning drill to aid memorization by way of spaced repetition.
$ sudo pip install pyflashcards
Idealy, flashcards are contained in studysets or also called decks.
For this use case, we will create a basic mathematic studyset.
$ flashcards sets new
A series of prompt will ask you to enter the title for this set and also a description for this set.
Once all the information has been entered, a confirmation message will be shown, letting you know that the studyset has been created.
$ flashcards sets new
[cli][prompt] Title of the study set: Mathematics
[cli][prompt] Description for the study set: Some math questions.
Study set created !
At this point, you're ready to create flashcards to add in your studyset.
To add a card run this command:
$ flashcards cards add
A series of prompt will ask you to enter the question and the answer to that question.
Once all the information has been entered, a confirmation message will be shown, letting you know that the flashcard has been added to the studyset.
$ flashcards cards add
[cli][prompt] Question: 2 + 2 = ?
[cli][prompt] Answer: 4 (duhh)
Card added to the studyset !
You can also write the question and the answer inside an editor by passing the -e parameter to the flashcards cards add command. This will
open vim by default or the editor set to your EDITOR environment variable.
$ flashcards cards add -e
Congratulations ! You just added your first flashcards to your studyset !
To see the status of this studyset, simply run this command:
$ flashcards status
Currently using studyset: Mathematics
[NUMBER OF CARDS]: 1
[DESCRIPTION]:
Some math questions
If you're wondering how the application knows you're asking about the status of the "Mathematics" studyset, it's because this is the currently selected studyset.
By default, after creating a studyset, the application automaticaly selects it.
This means that the application is currently focused on this studyset. Every new created cards
will be stored in this studyset. Also, the status command will show informations on the currently selected
studyset.
To select a different studyset, use the following command:
# Let's say we want to select our "French" studyset
$ flashcards sets select French
selected studyset: French
any created card will be automatically added to this studyset.
When using tabcomplete, autocomplete should propose a list of existing studysets. If it doesn't, you will need to specify the path to the studyset file. Studysets are located at:
~/.flashcards/studysets/
Once you're satisfied with your studyset, you can start studying it. To study a studyset, run the following command:
# When using tabcomplete, autocomplete should propose a list of existing studysets after the `study` keyword.
# If it doesn't, you will need to specify the path to the studyset file. Studysets are located at:
# ~/.flashcards/studysets/
# Let's say we want to study our "French" studyset
$ flashcards study French
This command will launch a study session for the "French" studyset.
During a study session, the application will iterates through the cards in your studyset. For every card, the question of the card will be displayed. The program will then wait for any input before showing the answer to this question.
The goal here is to answer the question in your head. Once you think you got the question's answer, press any key to see if you were right !
Currently, flashcards only has two study modes: Linear and Shuffled.
-
linear
--mode linear: The default study modes is linear. In linear mode, the cards will be displayed in order, from the first one added to the last one. -
shuffled
--mode shuffled: In shuffled mode, the cards are shuffled, this means that the order of the cards will be randomized.
To choose a study mode, simply pass a --mode parameter to the study command:
# choosing the shuffled mode
$ flashcards study <set> --mode shuffled
When installing with pip, auto completion should work out of the box for linux distributions.
It hasn't been tested on windows.
For OSX, you might have to copy or reference the flashcards-complete.sh script to your .bash_profile file.
By default, studysets are stored in the following path:
~/.flashcards/studysets