Ankivalenz

Ankivalenz is a tool for generating Anki notes from HTML files.

Tutorial

In this walk-through we will write our notes as Markdown files, use pandoc¹ to convert them to HTML, and finally use Ankivalenz to generate an Anki deck with Anki notes extracted from our Markdown files.

Installation

Ankivalenz is distributed as a Python package, and requires Python 3.10+. To install:

$ pip3 install ankivalenz

Initialize project

Create a folder for your notes:

$ mkdir Notes
$ cd Notes

Ankivalenz needs a configuration file, containing the name and ID of the Anki deck. This can be generated with ankivalenz init:

$ ankivalenz init .

Write a note

Add the following to a file named Cell.md:

# Cell

## Types

- Prokaryotic ?:: does not contain a nucleus
- Eukaryotic ?:: contains a nucleus

Generate Anki deck

Convert it to HTML:

$ pandoc Cell.md > Cell.html

And run Ankivalenz:

$ ankivalenz run .

This generates a file Notes.apkg that can be imported to Anki. Open Anki and go to File -> Import, and find Notes.apkg.

Review

The new Anki deck will have two notes:

This is what the first note looks like in Anki:

Syntax

Front/back cards

Ankivalenz supports front/back cards, where the front is the question and the back is the answer. To create a front/back card, add a new list item with the question, followed by ?:: and the answer:

- Color of the sun ?:: Yellow

You can flip the order of the question and answer by using ::? instead:

- Anwer ::? Question

Two-way notes

Two-way notes can be created with :::

- Side 1 :: Side 2

This will create two cards in Anki:

Standalone questions/answers

Sometimes you want to create a note refering to the parent heading. This can be done with standalone questions/answers:

- Sun
  - ::? The star in our solar system

This will create a note with the answer "Sun" and the question "The star in our solar system". The other types of delimeters ("::" and "?::") can be used in the same way.

Cloze cards

Ankivalenz supports cloze deletion², where the answer is hidden in the question. To create a cloze card, add a new list item with the question, using Anki's cloze syntax:

- The {{c1::sun}} is {{c2::yellow}}.

Nested lists

Lists can be nested:

- Solar System
  - Star ?:: Sun
  - Planet
    - Earth ?:: Blue
    - Mars ?:: Red

The headings for the nested lists become a part of the notes' paths:

Math

If you are writing Markdown files, and use pandoc to convert them, the following syntax for math is supported:

- Inline math: $1 + 2$
- Display math: $$1 + 2$$

With the --mathjax flag, pandoc will generate the correct markup, using \( ... \) as delimeters for inline math, and \[ ... \] as delimeters for display math:

$ pandoc --mathjax Note.md > Note.html