ankiconnect-rs

A work-in-progress Rust crate for interacting with AnkiConnect, enabling convenient programmatic control of Anki from within Rust applications. Provides type-safe abstractions for common Anki operations with a clean domain-driven API.

Features

🃏 Card Management: Create notes, find cards, browse cards via the Anki GUI
🗃️ Deck Operations: Create decks, list existing decks, get statistics
📦 Media Handling: Store media files from paths/URLs/base64 data
🧩 Model Support: Work with note types, validate fields, manage templates
🔍 Search Capabilities: Build complex search queries with a fluent interface
🔄 Error Handling: Comprehensive error types for AnkiConnect-specific issues
✅ Well Tested: Mock server integration tests for all major operations

Installation

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
ankiconnect-rs = "1.0.0"

Prerequisites

Anki with AnkiConnect installed
Anki running with AnkiConnect enabled (default: localhost:8765)

API Overview

The crate is organized around a central AnkiClient that provides access to domain-specific clients:

client.cards() - Operations for notes and cards (add notes, find cards, etc.)
client.decks() - Operations for decks (create, list, get stats, etc.)
client.models() - Operations for note types (get fields, templates, etc.)
client.media() - Operations for media files (store, retrieve, etc.)

Usage

Basic Example

use ankiconnect_rs::{AnkiClient, DuplicateScope, NoteBuilder};
use std::error::Error;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
    // Create a client with default connection (localhost:8765)
    let client = AnkiClient::new();

    // Get available decks and models
    let decks = client.decks().get_all()?;
    let models = client.models().get_all()?;

    // Build a note with the selected model
    let selected_model = &models[0];
    let front_field = selected_model.field_ref("Front").unwrap();
    let back_field = selected_model.field_ref("Back").unwrap();

    let note = NoteBuilder::new(selected_model.clone())
        .with_field(front_field, "¿Dónde está la biblioteca?")
        .with_field(back_field, "Where is the library?")
        .with_tag("spanish-vocab")
        .build()?;

    // Add the note to the first deck
    let note_id = client.cards().add_note(&decks[0], note, false, None)?;
    println!("Added note with ID: {}", note_id.value());

    Ok(())
}

Adding Media to Notes

use ankiconnect_rs::{AnkiClient, MediaSource, NoteBuilder};
use std::error::Error;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
    let client = AnkiClient::new();
    let decks = client.decks().get_all()?;
    let models = client.models().get_all()?;
    
    let selected_model = &models[0];
    let front_field = selected_model.field_ref("Front").unwrap();
    let back_field = selected_model.field_ref("Back").unwrap();

    let note = NoteBuilder::new(selected_model.clone())
        .with_field(front_field, "Dog")
        .with_field(back_field, "A friendly animal")
        .with_tag("animals")
        // Add an image to the front field
        .with_image(
            front_field,
            MediaSource::Url("https://example.com/dog.jpg".to_string()),
            "dog.jpg"
        )
        .build()?;

    client.cards().add_note(&decks[0], note, false, None)?;
    Ok(())
}

Building Search Queries

use ankiconnect_rs::{AnkiClient, QueryBuilder, CardState};
use std::error::Error;

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
    let client = AnkiClient::new();
    
    // Build a complex search query
    let query = QueryBuilder::new()
        .in_deck("Japanese::Vocabulary")
        .and()
        .field("Front").contains("犬")
        .and()
        .not()
        .in_state(CardState::Suspended)
        .build();
    
    // Find cards matching the query
    let cards = client.cards().find(&query)?;
    println!("Found {} matching cards", cards.len());
    
    Ok(())
}

More Examples

See the examples directory for more complete examples:

list_decks.rs - Listing decks and their information
list_models.rs - Listing models (note types) and their fields
add_note.rs - Interactive example of adding a note with media

License

Licensed under either of:

Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

ankiconnect-rs 1.0.0