fertkir / vocabulary-to-google-sheet

Save examples from dictionaries to Google Sheet in one click.

What is it for?

Watch in this video. Suppose you're learning a language, how do you remember new vocabulary? There're beliefs that the best approach is to read a sentence which has a new word in it.

For example, you want to remember a word car. You open an online dictionary and see these examples:

• I have a car of BMW brand.
• You drive your car too fast.
• What color is your car?

What would you do with these? I would save them to my vocabulary Google Sheet and read them on the next day. But copy-pasting each sentence isn't cool, especially on your smartphone =(

This browser extension allows you to have those sentences to look like this in your browser:

• I have a car of BMW brand. [Save]
• You drive your car too fast. [Save]
• What color is your car? [Save]

Where [Save] is a link. When you click it, the sentence is saved to your Google Sheet. Isn't that cool? =)

I like it! But what do I do with those sentences in a Google Sheet?

There's a nice Google Sheet add-on that will automate the learning process. Once you've saved the sentences, you'll periodically receive emails with them to recollect. More details how the Google Sheet add-on works, what it does and how often does it send emails can be found in the add-on description.

What online dictionaries are supported?

The full list can be found here, among them are:

• https://www.google.com/
• https://dictionary.cambridge.org/
• https://www.spanishdict.com/

Since sentences detection is based on regular expressions, it would be quite fast to add support of other dictionaries.

How to get it?

For desktops

• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome

For Android

Google Chrome's extension is supported by the following browsers on Android (read this manual how to install it):

• Kiwi Browser
• Yandex Browser
• Might be supported by other Chromium-based browsers, but I've tested it only with Kiwi and Yandex.

For iPhone

Unfortunately, iPhone doesn't support browser extensions. But Vocabulary 90 add-on supports adding sentences through a Google Form (see screenshots here). Currently, it's the most convenient way of adding sentences for iPhones.

How to install

How to install the extension and how to setup a target Google Sheet for it, please read here.

How to build the source code

Requirements

1. Ubuntu or other Linux distribution.
2. jq v.1.5.1 (sudo apt install jq) - for merging manifest.json for different extension distributions.
3. zip - to create archive of extension
4. make

Building process

Run make

Built extensions will be in build/ directory.

vocabulary-to-google-sheet's Issues

Spreadsheet ID should be renamed to Spreadsheet

In case of Connectivity Error the Save link should be available for a retry

Workaround: refresh the page to get the link back

Google authentication doesn't work in Kiwi browser

The exact reason isn't found yet.
But here we obviously create a new listener on each auth call:

vocabulary-to-google-sheet/src/auth.js

Line 43 in 83d824b

browser.webRequest.onBeforeRequest.addListener(function(requestDetails) {

We should check with hasListener() call: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/webRequest/onBeforeRequest

Anchor minor issues

This one doesn't work:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/be#:~:text=There's%20no%20money%20left%20-%20what%20are%20we%20to%20do%3F

Eliminate annoying opening and closing tabs on getting new tokens

Set up automatic publishing to Mozilla

https://addons-server.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/api/signing.html

In Firefox access token is requested every time

Parallel saving of sentences to sheet offline and saving online through browser extension

If you save values to Google Sheets application on Android, and the values hasn't been synchronized to cloud, they can later override the values you've added through the browser extension.

Workaround: do not use Google Sheets application in offline mode and the browser plugin simultaneously.

Cannot differ hyphen from space in Cambridge dictionary

e.g. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/merry-go-round

Update wiki

1. https://github.com/fertkir/vocabulary-to-google-sheet/wiki/Google-Sheets-extension-FAQ#how-to-open-offline-dictionary

Manifest version 2 is deprecated

Manifest version 2 is deprecated, and support will be removed in 2023. See https://developer.chrome.com/blog/mv2-transition/ for more details.

Fetch site-settings.json from Github rather than from Bitbucket pages

This line: https://github.com/fertkir/vocabulary-to-google-sheet/blob/main/common/options/options.js#L33

Add autotests for each dictionary site and run them daily

Rules for detecting vocabulary examples become obsolete from time to time.
We'd better have some autotests that will check that rules work on daily basis.

Spaces encoded in url by + cannot be parsed

e.g. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/on+the+make

New sites-settings.js isn't applied after add-on upgrade if sites-settings.json has been loaded manually

After add-on upgrade, if sites-settings.js has been changed for the release, previously loaded sites-settings.json will be used instead.
Workaround: Use reload sites settings

Add Yandex Browser support

The add-on can be installed for Yandex Browser through Chrome Web Store, but the add-on doesn't work correctly.
Also the add-on should be install for Kiwi Browser through Chrome Web Store as well.

Authentication doesn't work in non-Chrome Chromium desktop browsers

Unchecked runtime.lastError: The user turned off browser signin

chrome.identity.getAuthToken() call doesn't work

Set up automatic publishing to Chrome Webstore

https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/using_webstore_api/

Vocabulary added with offset (under previous line's url)

Add ability to set SpreadsheetId from a list of documents

Currently in order to set the Spreadsheet where the browser extension will save the sentences, a user has to save its ID in the extension settings.
I suppose this isn't very convenient. Would be better to let a user select the desired Spreadsheet from the list of his documents.

Pipeline doesn't upload package to Chrome Store

Returns 401

Auth token becomes obsolete in a day

If the browser on Android was open for a day, the user receives "Cannot save" error.
Workaround: restart the browser.

Append anchors to links

It's hard to find a meaning on the concrete word usage on a long dictionary page.

Need to extract id of the tag and add it as an anchor to the end of the link.