My-Words-App

I build this command-line app to better manage my English vocabulary study.

Live Demo (Click on image to link to YouTube):

What is the problem you're solving?

In the past, this was the process when I was trying to memorize vocabularies:

See a word I don't understand -> google it -> Add the word and its definition to an excel file -> Review and try to quiz myself by hiding the definition column on excel -> Repeat

As you can see, this process is tedious and hard to keep track of my progress. For example, if I want to take a quiz only on the incorrect words from last quiz, it's quite a manual process using Excel.

The app is a centralized place for me to do word searching, studying and quizzing.

Why command-line app? Why not mobile or web?

Because I am a nerd and I love cli! I feel like I can better concentrate with cli and just using my keyboard. Plus I've always wanted to build a cli tool with Go - this is the first one I've ever built.

Main features

• CRUD operations for words and definitions. Support cli input and csv file upload.
• Search a word's definition through dictionary api.
• Take quizzes and review the quiz results.
• Review the incorrect words from the last quiz and do a quiz again on only those words.
• -h or --help on commands to see exact usages.

Commands

Usage: my-words-app [command]

Available Commands:

delete: Delete a word from database

help: Help about any command

init: Initialize the app. Run this if it's your first time using the app!!!

quiz: Take a quiz of [count] words from database. You need minimum 10 words in database to run this command.

search: Search word definition from the dictionary api. After search, you can add the word to the database.

select: Print or create a csv file of the words and definitions in database. If no flags are provided, will select latest 10 words.

transcript: Show transcript of [quizId] quiz, if no quizId is provided, will show the latest quiz. Use --history to get the quizId.

upsert: Insert or update a word and its definition to the database. Use --file flag to upsert with a csv file.

Usage

You can simply go to /example and download the app to start using it! More details in README in example.

Or you can build the project following these steps:

1. Install Go (version >= 1.18) if you haven't already

2. Clone this repository

3. Add a .env file to the root. Refer to .env.example

   The app uses this api to provide word suggestion if there's a spelling misktake when using search command. You can either get your own api key, or disable it by setting ENABLE_WORD_SUGGESTION=false in .env

4. Run go build

5. --help to see the help

./my-words-app --help

Tech stack

The app is built with Go, sqlite, and these awesome cli frameworks / packages:

• cobra
• promptui
• go-pretty

Future Improvements

• Add more colors and styles.
• Support different languages.
• Search for synonyms when adding words. Option to add synonyms to database.
• Search and add the word's example sentences.
• ...