Generate images and sound for flashcards using DuckDuckGo and the Forvo API. DuckDuckGo image search is a modified version (with much gratitude!) of duckduckgo-images-api.
This is an active project. Feedback is much appreciated.
- Python 3
- (Recommended) Virtual Environment
- If you want to download sounds, you need a subscription to the Forvo API and to set the key as the environment variable
FORVO_API_KEY. You can still download images without a Forvo API Key.
Run the following commands in your terminal:
git clone https://github.com/moniquemurphy/ringo.git && cd ringo
pip install -r requirements.txt
This is a command line interface tool. That means you run it from Terminal (Mac/Linux), CMD (Windows), or whatever program you use to run the command line on your machine. You will cd into the ringo folder wherever you have saved it on your computer.
You will need a .txt file of words you want to look up. It's easiest if you save it in the same directory that contains the file ringo.py.
To view help for the tool, type the command python ringo.py --help.
If you don't have a Forvo API key, you can still save images for a list of words. You will need to decide which country/language to use to search. You can see all the DuckDuckGo country codes in images/ddglangs.py or use this page for reference. This script picks a random image from the first 10 results on DuckDuckGo and saves it to the images directory.
The following command searches DuckDuckGo for images in words.txt using the Japan country code.
python ringo.py --ddg_lang jp-jp words.txt
If you do have a Forvo API key, make sure you have saved it as an environment variable calledl FORVO_API_KEY. You will need to tell the tool which language to constrain your search to. You can see all the Forvo language codes in sounds/forvolangs.py or use this page for reference. The cheapest Forvo API plan is $2 per month and allows 500 requests per day. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem possible to combine the search and save for a particular sound into one request, so each individual word will use up 2 requests. This is still much faster than doing it manually, though!
The following command searches Forvo for Japanese sounds for the words in words.txt.
python ringo.py --forvo_lang ja words.txt
You can combine all of the flags to get both sounds and images.
python ringo.py --ddg_lang jp-jp --forvo_lang ja words.txt
If a word wasn't found in either search, you can look at images_not_found.txt and sounds_not_found.txt. If you're feeling kind, you can request the sounds not found be added to Forvo.
When you're done downloading, you can move both images and sounds into your collection.media folder. See my guide to adding cards to Anki and taking advantage of ringo!