Node

Installing

The Node SDK does not bundle the ODict CLI, so make sure you have it installed first. Node invokes ODict as a child process in service mode, then passes it instructions via inter-process communication.

Once you have the CLI installed, you can install the Node SDK via npm or your favorite Node package manager:

# Node
npm install theopendictionary
# Yarn
yarn add theopendictionary
# PNPM
pnpm install theopendictionary

Limitations

As of this writing, the Node SDK is missing the following functionality:

• Support for merge

Reading & writing dictionaries

import { Dictionary } from 'theopendictionary';

// Compile from an XML path
const dict1 = await Dictionary.compile("dictionary.xml", "dictionary.odict");

// Write XML directly to a compiled dictionary
const dict2 = await Dictionary.write("<dictionary></dictionary>", "dictionary.odict");

Performing lookups

import { Dictionary, type Entry } from 'theopendictionary';

// Load the dictionary from disk with a default splitting threshold of 3
const dict = new Dictionary("dictionary.odict", { defaultSplitThreshold: 3 });

// Lookup a single word
const entries: Entry[][] = await dict.lookup(
  { 
    word: "ran", 
    fallback: "run" 
  }, 
  // You can specify lookup options via a second parameter
  { 
    split: 0, 
    follow: false 
  }
);

// Lookup multiple words
const multiEntries: Entry[][] = await dict.lookup(
  [
    { 
      word: "ran", 
      fallback: "run" 
    },
    { 
      word: "excited", 
      fallback: "excite" 
    },
  ]
  // When no options are specified, `split` defaults to the 
  // `defaultSplitThreshold` and `follow` defaults to `false`
);

Indexing & searching

import { Dictionary, type Entry } from 'theopendictionary';

// Load the dictionary from disk
const dict = new Dictionary("dictionary.odict");

// Index the dictionary
await dict.index();

// Search the dictionary
const entries: Entry[][] = await dict.search(
  "run", 
  // When not specified, both `force` and `exact` 
  // default to `false`
  {
    force: false, // Forces a re-index
    exact: true  // Search only by headword
  }
);

Splitting entries

import { Dictionary, type Entry } from "theopendictionary";

// Load the dictionary from disk
const dict = new Dictionary("dictionary.odict");

// Split "hotdog" into "hot" and "dog"
const entries: Entry[] = await dict1.split("hotdog", 3);

Listing all headwords

import { Dictionary } from "theopendictionary";

// Load the dictionary from disk
const dict = new Dictionary("dictionary.odict");

// List all headwords
const headwords: string[] = await dict1.lexicon();