learner

A Rust-powered academic research management system

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Features

• Academic Paper Management

  • Extract metadata from multiple sources (arXiv, IACR, DOI)
  • Support for both URLs and direct identifiers
  • Automatic source detection
  • Full paper metadata including authors, abstracts, and publication dates

• Local Database Management

  • SQLite-based storage for offline access
  • Full-text search capabilities
  • Case-insensitive title search
  • Duplicate detection and handling
  • Platform-specific default locations
  • PDF management with configurable storage location

• Command Line Interface (learnerd)

  • Interactive database management
  • Paper addition and retrieval
  • Search functionality
  • PDF downloading and management
  • Beautiful, colored output
  • Detailed logging options

Installation

Library

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
learner = "0.2"  # Core library

CLI Tool

cargo install learnerd

Usage

Library Usage

use learner::{Paper, Database};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    // Initialize database with default paths
    let db = Database::open(Database::default_path()).await?;
    
    // Add papers from various sources
    let paper = Paper::new("https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.07041").await?;
    paper.save(&db).await?;
    
    // Download PDF if available
    let pdf_dir = Database::default_pdf_path();
    paper.download_pdf(pdf_dir).await?;
    
    // Add papers from other sources
    let paper = Paper::new("10.1145/1327452.1327492").await?;  // From DOI
    let paper = Paper::new("2023/123").await?;                 // From IACR
    
    Ok(())
}

CLI Usage

# Initialize a new database (interactive)
learnerd init

# Add a paper (auto-detects source)
learnerd add 2301.07041
learnerd add "https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.07041"
learnerd add "10.1145/1327452.1327492"

# Skip PDF download
learnerd add 2301.07041 --no-pdf

# Download PDF for existing paper
learnerd download arxiv 2301.07041

# Retrieve paper details
learnerd get arxiv 2301.07041

# Search papers
learnerd search "neural networks"

# Verbose output for debugging
learnerd -v add 2301.07041

# Clean up database (with confirmation)
learnerd clean

Project Structure

The project consists of two main components:

1. learner - Core library providing:

   • Paper metadata extraction
   • Database management
   • PDF download capabilities
   • Source-specific clients (arXiv, IACR, DOI)
   • Error handling

2. learnerd - CLI application offering:

   • User-friendly interface
   • PDF management
   • Interactive confirmations
   • Colored output
   • Logging and debugging capabilities

Roadmap

Phase 1: Core Improvements

• PDF management
• PDF content extraction
• DB/Paper removal functionality
• Batch paper operations
• Export capabilities
• Enhanced search features
• Custom metadata fields

Phase 2: Advanced Features

• LLM-powered paper analysis
• PDF daemon for paper versioning and annotations
• Automated paper discovery
• Citation graph analysis
• Web interface

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. Before making major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

Continuous Integration

The project maintains code quality through automated CI workflows:

• Code Formatting

  • rustfmt: Enforces consistent Rust code formatting
  • taplo: Ensures TOML files (like Cargo.toml) follow consistent style

• Code Quality

  • clippy: Rust's official linter for catching common mistakes and enforcing best practices
  • cargo-udeps: Identifies unused dependencies to keep the project lean

• Testing

  • Runs the full test suite across all workspace members
  • TODO: Check cross-platform

• Release Safety

  • cargo-semver-checks: Verifies that version bumps follow semantic versioning rules
  • Prevents accidental breaking changes in minor/patch releases

All CI checks must pass before merging pull requests, maintaining consistent quality across contributions.

Development Setup

1. Clone the repository
2. Install dependencies:

   cargo build

3. Run tests:

   cargo test --workspace

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• arXiv API for paper metadata
• IACR for cryptography papers
• CrossRef for DOI resolution
• SQLite for local database support

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Made for making learning sh*t less annoying.