Parse nodeIDs

[benjamin-weller]

This change allows for a parsing of note IDs. This is the first step in allowing (eventually) the automatic storing of the created note ID in the markdown file.

[jasonwilliams]

@benjamin-weller could you explain where these noteIDs come from? Why are they added and what is generating them, the markdown would be hand written most of the time. I may be missing some context here

[benjamin-weller]

These note IDs are uniquely generated by Anki.

See the note/card ID section of the browser search documentation here.

IIUC these IDs uniquely identify the note in question; as such you could eventually update a specific note given its parsed note ID.

How I intend to eventually allow for updating of already created notes:

• Parse noteId out of the comments (this change)
• When creating the deck/uploading the cards to Anki via AnkiConnect simply check and see if a note ID is set when we parsed the card from markdown. If the ID is set, and isn't some sentinel value, then let's call AnkiConnect to update the card instead of trying to create it:

Now that there's a way for us to update notes, I would like to have a way for us to automatically insert the note IDs into the markdown during the deck/note creation command.

How I intend to get/insert the note ID into markdown:

• Call Anki: Send To Deck (or other creation command) in VS Code
• This creation command will eventually call AnkiConnect to create the notes via addNotes:
  
• Following the creation, AnkiConnect will respond to us with the note IDs of the created notes, I would then insert these IDs into the markdown via the edit API

[jasonwilliams]

Hey @benjamin-weller great work on making a start on this, I wasn't ignoring, it was just the holidays and I didn't have time to look over this. Hopefully I should have a bit more time now.

Thinking about the workflow here...
Someone will create a note in VS Code, when they send it to Anki, AnkiConnect gives us an ID back in the response I believe. Are you planning to take the ID and insert it back into the markdown once sent? (I understand this PR doesn't deal with that right now)

Do you have an idea how this comment will look like?

[benjamin-weller]

100% no worries, you've been very responsive before and honestly I have no expectations around super prompt responses, this is OSS; not much money changing hands here.

Someone will create a note in VS Code, when they send it to Anki, AnkiConnect gives us an ID back in the response I believe. Are you planning to take the ID and insert it back into the markdown once sent? (I understand this PR doesn't deal with that right now)

Yes, that's the ultimate goal

Do you have an idea how this comment will look like?

Yes the comment should look like <!-- notecardId: ###### --> or <!-- notecardId = ###### -->. I've generally tried to be tolerant of spaces in my regex.

[jasonwilliams]

Do we need this to be configurable? I have a feeling if people change this it could become messy.
I'd start off with it being hardcoded

[benjamin-weller]

Ok, yes I guess it could result in lots of questions/mis-configured regexes (and thus lots of github issues).

I'm going making this value just exist in code, I'll add it to a constants file if there is one, or just leave it by the parsing logic if there isn't.

[jasonwilliams]

Hey @benjamin-weller, maybe im doing something wrong here but could you explain why noteId isn't coming through when I test it?

[jasonwilliams]

I've also realised this repo doesn't support proper linting on CI so im going to sort that out. I will PR it, you may need to rebase apologies in advance

[benjamin-weller]

Sounds good I'll rebase here.

The unit tests pass and that's what I tested against, can you give me a direction as to how to set up your testing environment?

Is it like building a trial/test version of the extension and installing that?

[jasonwilliams]

Sure

https://github.com/jasonwilliams/anki/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#debugging
I clicked "Run & Debug" icon on the left, then clicked the play button next to "Run Extension".

This should launch another instance of VSCode, I used that to test. In the original instance you should be able to set breakpoints and inspect the code

[benjamin-weller]

Preliminary investigation is leading me to confusing places:

I'll continue to debug.

[benjamin-weller]

I don't know why the regex wasn't working with my previous setup, but I manually tested, and ran the unit tests; both now pass.

Here's what I get during manual debugging:

[jasonwilliams]

Awesome work thanks, I’ll take another look. Also it seems there’s a conflict with package.json, you may need to try and rebase

[jasonwilliams]

Your lockfile causes conflicts, like its trying to set it back to version 1, what version of nodejs/npm are you using? Everything else seems ok

[benjamin-weller]

Ok, I'm relatively new to the git flow, please let me know if my changes here match up and can be merged.

[jasonwilliams]

LGTM

[jasonwilliams]

Hey @benjamin-weller now this is merged what are your next steps?

[benjamin-weller]

I've outlined what I intend to do next here.