Why create a npm package ?

Just to:

• Understand what i use when i use npm i ... or yarn add ...
• Especially understand how they made it !

So, i create my first package !

What is the library ?

The library named Cedict dictionary and it's actually available on npm.js and yarnpkg.com !

This library simply give you some functions and a large JSON file with for each object the :

• Traditional character in Chinese
• Simplified character in Chinese
• Pinyin pronunciation
• English translation

Here is an example of what you can have in an object :

{ 
  traditional: "上天入地", 
  simplified: "上天入地", 
  pinyin: "shang4", 
  english: "lit. to go up to heaven or down to Hades (idiom)/fig. to go to great lengths/to search heaven and earth/" 
}

ℹ️ I do not currently speak Chinese while writing this article!
It’s a really complex language, though the C language and all its pointers 🤣.

What is the Cedict ?

The Cedict, called CC-CEDICT is a continuation of the CEDICT project.

This project provide a complete downloadable Chinese to English dictionary, and all of this in a specific format of CC-CEDICT.
It's an open source project who is actually frequently updated !

ℹ️ If you want, you can go to her wiki.

How the @tykok/cedict-dictionary package work

The project have two parts :

• The part who get data and format the Cedict into a JSON.
• The part who simply exploit the JSON.

To get the final JSON, we need to

• Download the .zip on CC-CEDICT project.
• Unzip it.
• Get the file who contain the dictionary.
• Parse it into a JSON file.

All this actions are in a script called by a cronjob who simply execute this script and update the JSON Cedict of the library.

The second part is more simply than the previous one !

Here, we have a JSON file. And we can simply exploit it with some functions to get for example a chinese object with a traditional character.

A simple start with @tykok/cedict-dictionary

To start, use yarn or npm to install the dependency :

# With yarn
yarn add @tykok/cedict-dictionary

# With npm
npm i @tykok/cedict-dictionary

Next, just import the global class to use the Cedict :

import Cedict from '@tykok/cedict-dictionary'

And, with the Cedict class, you can use some function to get a specific chinese character, the pronunciation or all the cedict !

To know how to use this package, you can go to the documentation.

Conclusion

This project is not just for fun. I create it to learn some things i actually don't know or improve it !

Of course, this project is open source and you can come to contribute to this project. There are still many things to improve !

Tell me if you have any suggestions, or remarks for the project. And of course if this article was interesting.