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Description:

qudb 0.6

Manage a database of questions and use it to generate assessments, e.g.
assignments, quizzes, and exams.
qudb is a personal question bank for instructors. It allows you to:

Manage your collection of questions for a given course, and assemble
various assessments out of them.
Track how you are using your questions. Query your database for
questions, terms, assessments, or assessment types.
An assessment type refers to a type of assessments that recur at
most once every term, such as quiz1, assignment2, and final. It
can be any arbitrary string identifying a type of assessment. An
assessment is a specific occurrence of an assessment type in a
given term, and hence is identified by a pair of a term and an
assessment type.
Example queries:

In which assessments has a given question been used?
What questions make up a given assessment?
What questions have been used in a given term?
What questions have been used in final exams across all terms?

Use a template to render an assessment document using its questions.
Distinguish between essay questions (default) and multiple-choice
questions.
Use arbitrary additional variables in your templates, so you can use
the same templates across courses by introducing, for example, an
additional course name variable.

Getting Started

Create a database:
qm init
By default, this command creates a ./qu.db database file. Use the
-D (or --database) option to specify the database file
location.

Add questions to assessments (an assessment is identified by a term
and an assessment type):
qm add --term 151 --assessment-type quiz1 questions/chapter1/whats-your-name.tex
qm add --term 151 --assessment-type quiz1 questions/chapter1/mcq/choose-a-month.tex
Use the -Q (or --questions-directory) option to specify where
to look for the question files. You can also specify a question’s
points (-p), whether it’s a bonus question (-b), and its
order in the assessment (-o) if you want to insert it somewhere
in the middle. The points, bonus, and order fields of a
question are per assessment, and can change from one assessment to
another.

Generate an assessment:
qm render --term 151 --assessment-type quiz1 --pdflatex quiz-template.tex
The --pdflatex option (or -P) assumes that your template is a
LaTeX file, requires the pdflatex program, and generates a PDF.
Without it, you get a rendered template.
The --config option (or -C) allows specifying additional
arbitrary template variables using an INI-style configuration
file.

Commands
Although the init, add, and render commands described above
are often enough, there are a few other commands that complement them.
Moreover, these three commands have a few options that control their
operation. Here are all the supported commands and their options.

init
usage: qm init [-h] [-D DATABASE]

Create a new database file as specified by the -D option. Defaults to ./qu.db.
If the database exists, do nothing

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-D DATABASE, --database DATABASE
SQLite database file path

list
usage: qm list [-h] [-D DATABASE] [-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY] [-t TERM]
[-y ASSESSMENT_TYPE] [-q QUESTION] [-m]
{terms,assessment-types,assessments,questions}

List existing entities: terms, assessment-types, assessments, or questions

positional arguments:
{terms,assessment-types,assessments,questions}
what to list

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-D DATABASE, --database DATABASE
SQLite database file path
-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY, --questions-directory QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY
where to look for questions. Question paths stored in
the database are relative to this path
-t TERM, --term TERM academic semester code, e.g. 142
-y ASSESSMENT_TYPE, --assessment-type ASSESSMENT_TYPE
examples: major1, assignment2, quiz3
-q QUESTION, --question QUESTION
include results related to this question only
-m, --mcq whether to retrieve MCQs or non-MCQs. cannot retrieve
both at once

add
usage: qm add [-h] [-D DATABASE] [-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY] -t TERM -y
ASSESSMENT_TYPE [-b] [-p POINTS] [-o ORDER] [-d DATE]
question

Add a question file to a given assessment, specified by a term and an
assessment-type (required options)

positional arguments:
question path to the question file

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-D DATABASE, --database DATABASE
SQLite database file path
-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY, --questions-directory QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY
where to look for questions. Question paths stored in
the database are relative to this path
-t TERM, --term TERM academic semester (3 digits)
-y ASSESSMENT_TYPE, --assessment-type ASSESSMENT_TYPE
examples: major1, assignment2, quiz3
-b, --bonus this is a bonus question
-p POINTS, --points POINTS
default points for question
-o ORDER, --order ORDER
the order of the question in this assessment; defaults
to last
-d DATE, --date DATE assessment date; format YYYY-MM-DD

update
usage: qm update [-h] [-D DATABASE] [-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY] -t TERM -y
ASSESSMENT_TYPE [-b] [-p POINTS] [-o ORDER] [-d DATE]
question

Update an existing assessment or question

positional arguments:
question path to the question file

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-D DATABASE, --database DATABASE
SQLite database file path
-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY, --questions-directory QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY
where to look for questions. Question paths stored in
the database are relative to this path
-t TERM, --term TERM academic semester (3 digits)
-y ASSESSMENT_TYPE, --assessment-type ASSESSMENT_TYPE
examples: major1, assignment2, quiz3
-b, --bonus this is a bonus question
-p POINTS, --points POINTS
default points for question
-o ORDER, --order ORDER
the order of the question in this assessment; defaults
to last
-d DATE, --date DATE assessment date; format YYYY-MM-DD

remove (or rm)
usage: qm remove [-h] [-D DATABASE] [-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY] -t TERM -y
ASSESSMENT_TYPE

Remove a question from an assessment

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-D DATABASE, --database DATABASE
SQLite database file path
-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY, --questions-directory QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY
where to look for questions. Question paths stored in
the database are relative to this path
-t TERM, --term TERM academic semester (3 digits)
-y ASSESSMENT_TYPE, --assessment-type ASSESSMENT_TYPE
examples: major1, assignment2, quiz3

render
usage: qm render [-h] [-D DATABASE] [-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY] -t TERM -y
ASSESSMENT_TYPE [-O OUTPUT_DIRECTORY] [-C CONFIG] [-P]
[-l MATERIAL]
template

Generate assessment documents using the specified template. Two documents are
generated: TERM-ASSESSMENT_TYPE.tex and TERM-ASSESSMENT_TYPE-solution.tex,
with the template variable "solution" set to False and True, respectively.
Templates are rendered using the Jinja2 template engine, with the following
delimiters: <% block %><% endblock %>, << variable >>, <# comment #>

positional arguments:
template path to the jinja2 template file

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-D DATABASE, --database DATABASE
SQLite database file path
-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY, --questions-directory QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY
where to look for questions. Question paths stored in
the database are relative to this path
-t TERM, --term TERM academic semester (3 digits)
-y ASSESSMENT_TYPE, --assessment-type ASSESSMENT_TYPE
examples: major1, assignment2, quiz3
-O OUTPUT_DIRECTORY, --output-directory OUTPUT_DIRECTORY
the directory in which the rendered files will be
saved
-C CONFIG, --config CONFIG
ini-style configuration file defining additional
template variables. (Use section [templates])
-P, --pdflatex process rendered file with pdflatex (4 runs)
-l MATERIAL, --material MATERIAL
specify the material to which this assessment
pertains. Available to the template in the "material"
variable

export
usage: qm export [-h] [-D DATABASE] [--overwrite] file

Export the database to a YAML file (does not include the contents of question
files)

positional arguments:
file YAML file to export to

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-D DATABASE, --database DATABASE
SQLite database file path
--overwrite overwrite the file if it already exists

import
usage: qm import [-h] [-D DATABASE] [-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY] [-u] file

Import data from a YAML file into the database. To learn the YAML schema,
export a minimal database, or see the README.md file

positional arguments:
file YAML file to import

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-D DATABASE, --database DATABASE
SQLite database file path
-Q QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY, --questions-directory QUESTIONS_DIRECTORY
where to look for questions. Question paths stored in
the database are relative to this path
-u, --update ignore existing, identical questions
Example valid YAML data:
'142': # term code
quiz1: # assessment type: creates an assessment in the parent term
- file: questions/chapter1/q1.tex # each item in the list is a question
- file: questions/chapter2/q5.tex # file: the file containing the question text
date: 2015-02-14 # a date in any question sets the assessment date
- bonus: true # set this question as a bonus question
file: questions/chapter2/arm-gcc.tex
points: 20 # how many points are assigned to this question in this assessment
quiz2: # another assessment in the same term
- date: 2015-03-07
file: questions/chapter3/q2.tex
- file: questions/chapter3/q3.tex
points: 20
'151': # another term
quiz1: # this is a different assessment from the previous quiz1,
# because it belongs to a different term
- file: questions/chapter6/q3.tex

Templates
Templates use the Jinja2 template
language. The render command requires the --term and
--assessment-type options to specify an assessment. The following
assessment variables are available in the template:

term: the term of the specified assessment.
title: assessment title, based on its type. For example, quiz1
results in the title Quiz 1, and major1 results in the title
Major Exam 1.
date: assessment date, as specified using the --date option
of the add and update commands.
solution (Boolean): whether we are rendering the solution.
qs: an ordered list of question objects belonging to this
assessment. Includes the following fields:

question.file: path of the question file.
points: question points.
bonus (Boolean): whether this is a bonus question.

mcqs: an ordered list of multiple-choice question objects,
otherwise similar to qs.
questions_relpath: the relative path from the current directory
to the questions as specified by the -Q/--questions-directory
option.

Variables can be referenced in the template by enclosing them in <<
and >>. For example, << title >> renders the assessment’s
title.
To use some basic logic in the template, use template statements, such
as for loops or if conditionals, by enclosing them in <% and
%>. For example:
<% for q in qs %>
<% if q.bonus %>
\bonusquestion
<% else %>
\question
<% endif %>
<% if q.points %>[<< q.points >>]<% endif %>
\input{<< questions_relpath >>/<< q.question.file >>}
<% endfor %>
For information about the template language, consult the Jinja2
Template Designer
Documentation.

Assumptions

One SQLite database file per course.
Questions and templates are text files.
Multiple choice questions have an /mcq/ component in their paths.
Each question file includes the question’s solution in a way that
allows it to be easily listed or omitted in a template.
Although it is not required, qudb works well with the
exam LaTeX package. For example,
each question file can wrap the solution in a solution
environment, then the template can easily include or exclude the
solution based on the value of the solution template variable as
follows:

<% if solution %>
\printanswers
<% endif %>

License
BSD (2-clause).