linecode/quizlet

Study Quizlet Flashcard sets from the command line

Quizlet Quizzer

This project uses the Quizlet API to construct a quiz that allows for certain keywords to be specified for a reasonable way to determine correctness of an answer. Exact-string matching is excessive and makes either writing the cards or answering the cards too difficult.

Requirements

• Python 2.7
• pip/virtualenv
• Quizlet API Client ID

Installation

$ git clone git://github.com/joequery/quizlet.git
$ cd quizlet
$ sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

Now rename quizlet_secret-template.py to quizlet_secret.py. Paste in your Quizlet API Client ID where indicated.

Creating flashcard sets

Create a public flashcard set on Quizlet. Suppose we create a card with the question "What are some defining characteristics of the Python programming language?". We would structure our answer part of the flashcard in the following way:

* the [automatic] [process]ing of [docstrings]
* whitespace [indent]ation for [delimit]ing [blocks]
* [immutable] [strings]

A * indicates an answer part, and every flashcard should have at least one. The words in the brackets are substrings that a user should provide in order for the question to be considered correct. For our example above, the following answers for the first answer part would be considered correct:

• automatic processing of docstrings
• processing of docstrings automatically
• docstrings are automatically processed

For the second answer part:

• blocks are delimited using indentation
• you delimit blocks using whitespace indentation
• indent to delimit blocks

What's the point?

The point of this project is that exact string matching for flashcards is an unreasonable way for a tool to help you study. By letting the user determine what's important in a term or answer, we can create a tool that doesn't reject an answer just because the wrong tense of a word was used or a particular article adjective was missing.

Quizzing yourself from the command line

Downloading a flashcard set

After creating your set, visit your flash card set in the browser. For example,

http://quizlet.com/20147210/computer-security-management-ch5-flash-cards/

Extract the set ID from the URL and copy it to your clipboard. In the example above, the set ID is 20147210.

Now navigate to the location you cloned this repository.

$ cd /path/to/quizlet

We will now download the JSON representing the flashcard set.

$ python download.py 20147210
Downloaded 'Computer Security Management Ch5' set to
sets/computer-security-management-ch5-flash-cards.quiz

Beginning the quiz

Now that you have the flashcard set downloaded, start the quiz by passing the path to the quiz file you want to study to study.py. (Tab auto-completion is your friend here)

$ python study.py sets/computer-security-management-ch5-flash-cards.quiz

You should now see the quiz start

==================================================
Quizlet Quizzer!
(Enter h as your answer for help and options)
==================================================

Question 1/41

(5 parts remaining) List the security job titles 
Your answer: 

Entering in h as your answer brings up the help menu

=============================================================
Quiz help! Current options are

h: This help screen
hint: Receive a hint
see: See an answer part. You will have to repeat the question
skip: Skip this question. 

Everything else will be considered an answer to the question
=============================================================

(5 parts remaining) List the security job titles
Your answer:

Command line options

--hints

To have hints always on (which is useful for when you're first learning terms), pass --hints to study.py

$ python study.py --hints sets/computer-security-management-ch5-flash-cards.quiz

--shuffle

To have the terms shuffled into random order, pass --shuffle to study.py

$ python study.py --shuffle sets/computer-security-management-ch5-flash-cards.quiz

Combining command line options

You can combine both --shuffle and --hints if you wish.

$ python study.py --hints --shuffle sets/computer-security-management-ch5-flash-cards.quiz

Enjoy studying!