ankisyncd

Anki is a powerful open source flashcard application, which helps you quickly and easily memorize facts over the long term utilizing a spaced repetition algorithm. Anki's main form is a desktop application (for Windows, Linux and macOS) which can sync to a web version (AnkiWeb) and mobile versions for Android and iOS.

This is a personal Anki server, which you can sync against instead of AnkiWeb. It was originally developed by David Snopek to support the flashcard functionality on Bibliobird, a web application for language learning.

This version is a fork of jdoe0/ankisyncd. It supports Python 3 and Anki 2.1.

Contents

• Installing
• Installing (Docker)
• Setting up Anki
  • Anki 2.1
  • Anki 2.0
  • AnkiDroid
• Running ankisyncd without pyaudio
  • Anki ≥2.1.9
  • Older versions
• ENVVAR configuration overrides
• Support for other database backends

Installing

0. Install Anki. The currently supported version range is 2.1.1〜2.1.11, with the exception of 2.1.9¹. (Keep in mind this range only applies to the Anki used by the server, clients can be as old as 2.0.27 and still work.) Running the server with other versions might work as long as they're not 2.0.x, but things might break, so do it at your own risk. If for some reason you can't get the supported Anki version easily on your system, you can use anki-bundled from this repo:

    $ git submodule update --init
    $ cd anki-bundled
    $ pip install -r requirements.txt
   

   Keep in mind pyaudio, a dependency of Anki, requires development headers for Python 3 and PortAudio to be present before running pip. If you can't or don't want to install these, you can try patching Anki.

1. Install the dependencies:

    $ pip install webob
   

2. Modify ankisyncd.conf according to your needs

3. Create user:

    $ ./ankisyncctl.py adduser <username>
   

4. Run ankisyncd:

    $ python -m ankisyncd
   

---

1. 2.1.9 is not supported due to commit 95ccbfdd3679 introducing the dependency on the aqt module, which depends on PyQt5. The server should still work fine if you have PyQt5 installed. This has been fixed in commit a389b8b4a0e2, which is a part of the 2.1.10 release. ↑

Installing (Docker)

Follow these instructions.

Setting up Anki

Anki 2.1

Create a new directory in the add-ons folder (name it something like ankisyncd), create a file named __init__.py containing the code below and put it in the ankisyncd directory.

import anki.sync, anki.hooks, aqt

addr = "http://127.0.0.1:27701/" # put your server address here
anki.sync.SYNC_BASE = "%s" + addr
def resetHostNum():
    aqt.mw.pm.profile['hostNum'] = None
anki.hooks.addHook("profileLoaded", resetHostNum)

Anki 2.0

Create a file (name it something like ankisyncd.py) containing the code below and put it in ~/Anki/addons.

import anki.sync

addr = "http://127.0.0.1:27701/" # put your server address here
anki.sync.SYNC_BASE = addr
anki.sync.SYNC_MEDIA_BASE = addr + "msync/"

AnkiDroid

Advanced → Custom sync server

Unless you have set up a reverse proxy to handle encrypted connections, use http as the protocol. The port will be either the default, 27701, or whatever you have specified in ankisyncd.conf (or, if using a reverse proxy, whatever port you configured to accept the front-end connection).

Do not use trailing slashes.

Even though the AnkiDroid interface will request an email address, this is not required; it will simply be the username you configured with ankisyncctl.py adduser.

Running ankisyncd without pyaudio

ankisyncd doesn't use the audio recording feature of Anki, so if you don't want to install PortAudio, you can edit some files in the anki-bundled directory to exclude pyaudio:

Anki ≥2.1.9

Just remove "pyaudio" from requirements.txt and you're done. This change has been introduced in commit ca710ab3f1c1.

Older versions

First go to anki-bundled, then follow one of the instructions below. They all do the same thing, you can pick whichever one you're most comfortable with.

Manual version: remove every line past "# Packaged commands" in anki/sound.py, remove every line starting with "pyaudio" in requirements.txt

ed version:

$ echo '/# Packaged commands/,$d;w' | tr ';' '\n' | ed anki/sound.py
$ echo '/^pyaudio/d;w' | tr ';' '\n' | ed requirements.txt

sed -i version:

$ sed -i '/# Packaged commands/,$d' anki/sound.py
$ sed -i '/^pyaudio/d' requirements.txt

ENVVAR configuration overrides

Configuration values can be set via environment variables using ANKISYNCD_ prepended to the uppercase form of the configuration value. E.g. the environment variable, ANKISYNCD_AUTH_DB_PATH will set the configuration value auth_db_path

Environment variables override the values set in the ankisyncd.conf.

Support for other database backends

sqlite3 is used by default for user data, authentication and session persistence.

ankisyncd supports loading classes defined via config that manage most persistence requirements (the media DB and files are being worked on). All that is required is to extend one of the existing manager classes and then reference those classes in the config file. See ankisyncd.conf for example config.