Anki-Markdown-Notes

⚠️⚠️Please version control your markdown notes and backup your Anki notes before attempting to import notes from markdown files using this add-on. Since only two built-in models are supported, this add-on might cause unexpected behavior. This has worked out well for me since Jan 2018 because I was starting from scratch and I only use the two supported models. ⚠️⚠️

This is an Anki add-on that extracts notes from markdown files and imports them to Anki. This add-on is meant to be used when maintaining all notes using Markdown files only - any edits made from Anki will be lost the next time this add-on is used. Major advantages of doing so:

• easily see all notes from each deck at the same place
• easy to add notes in bulk into Anki when covering a lot of new material
• maintain additional material that doesn't have to go into Anki along with Anki notes
• version control the notes since they are now markdown files

Only these two built-in models are supported for now - Basic and Basic (and reversed card) Media (images/audio) is not supported.

Installation

To download and install directly from Ankiweb, please copy and paste the following code into the desktop program: 2141874715

Alternatively, open your add-ons folder by selecting "Tools -> Add-Ons -> Open Add-Ons Folder" and simply paste the anki-markdown.py file into it.

Usage

Existing Notes

To start using this add-on, first extract all existing notes into markdown by selecting "Tools -> Export to Markdown Notes". You should see all the notes following the built in models in a "Notes" folder in the folder you chose. You can now follow the conventions below and choose to rearrange your notes along with their id comments.

Starting from scratch

Create a Notes folder wherever you want the notes to be and follow the below conventions. Then select "Tools -> Import from Markdown Notes" in the Anki desktop app to import them into Anki.

Conventions

The file structure of the Markdown files is shown below.

• All notes extracted from the root folder are added to the Default deck. In the below case, notes from random.md go to the Default deck.
• Everything in a sub-folder goes to a deck named after that subfolder - here notes from socket.md and files.md go into the python deck.
• The filename is set as a tag for each note in a file - here all notes from socket.md are assigned a tag 'socket'. The tag can be used used in the card templates as shown here.

Notes
│   algorithms.md
│
└───python
│   │   socket.md
│   │   files.md
│
└───tools
    │   git.md
    │   tmux.md

Currently there is support only for two types of notes - Basic and Basic (and reversed card). To create a basic card, enter the following anywhere in the Markdown file:

Q: Question
A: - Answer line 1
- Answer line 2

This creates a basic card with Question as the front of the card and

Answer line 1
Answer line 2

as the back.

Blank lines in the markdown file are considered the end of a Note.

To create a basic and reversed card, use QA instead of Q above like so:

QA: Question
A: - Answer line 1
- Answer line 2

Sample Notes are in the Notes folder.

Development

All the code is in the single anki-markdown.py file. Going through the docs first is highly recommended. In the markdown files, id comments are added as soon as a note is imported successfully into anki - this will ensure any changes to the note in the markdown file edits the same anki note.

This addon is shared on AnkiWeb using the instructions here.