Archive¶

This document contains some more detailed information on the archive.

Structure¶

The archive consists of a SQLite database file (you decide the name) with a single table named cards. This table has the following columns:

id (Integer)[primary key] -> row id
title (Text)[unique] -> card title
description (Text) -> card description
content (Text) -> card content
tags (Text) -> card tags
modified (DateTime) -> last modification date and time

The id and modified columns don’t need to be taken into account when dealing with the cards. The id is there just for convenience, while the modified column is automatically set to the date and time in which the card is inserted/modified automatically by the archive.

Connection¶

As of version 0.2.0, infocards supports archives based on MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite databases. You can find the information required for each database type below.

MySQL¶

infocards uses the PyMySQL module in order to connect to MySQL databases. The parameters for the connection are passed to the Archive constructor like so:

from infocards import Archive

ar = Archive(
    mysql = DATABASE_HOST,
    user = DATABASE_USER,
    passwd = DATABASE_PASSWORD,
    port = DATABASE_PORT,
    db = DATABASE_NAME)

PostgreSQL¶

For PostgreSQL databases, the pg8000 module is used. It’s parameters are similar to those of the MySQL database:

from infocards import Archive

ar = Archive(
    postgresql = DATABASE_HOST
    user = DATABASE_USER,
    passwd = DATABASE_PASSWORD,
    port = DATABASE_PORT,
    db = DATABASE_NAME,
    ssl = USE_SSL) # Boolean value

The main difference is the included ssl parameter, which is used to indicate whether the connector should use SSL or not (default is false). Some databases, such as the Heroku ones, may need the SSL set to True.

SQLite¶

Connection to SQLite databases is done through the builtin sqlite module in Python:

from infocards import Archive

ar = Archive(
    sqlite = DATABASE_PATH)

SQLite databases are file-based, therefore you have to specify the absolute path of the file to connect to. If the file does not exist, it may be created by the Archive.

Search¶

The search functionality of the archive can be tunned a bit in order to obtain different results. Modyfing the likelihood parameter (default is 80) allows you to specify the percentage on which two words are considered similar. The relevance represents the percentage (default is 50) of search query words that must be included in the card tag list in order to consider that card as relevant to the search:

from infocards import Archive

# ar = Archive(...)

cards = ar.search("this is my search query", likelihood=80, relevance=50)