Cedict

Cedict is a small, cross-platform client/server application which features a Chinese-English dictionary lookup.

The dictionary is sourced from the CC-CEDICT project, "with the aim to provide a complete Chinese to English dictionary with pronunciation in pinyin for the Chinese characters." (Project home)

The server is a REST-style .NET Core Web API implementation. The client is an Angular implementation (ClientApp directory).

Requirements

• .NET Core >= 3.1
• Node >= 13.7.0
• Other dependencies will be downloaded during installation and build (see below).
• The CEDICT Sqlite database needs to be provided and the connection string specified in the server's appsettings file. I chose to generate the database using the cedict_to_sqlite project.

Installation

• Copy the CEDICT Sqlite database (described above) to the Cedict project directory. (It will be copied to the bin directory upon building.)
• Open a terminal and run npm install from the ClientApp directory to install the Angular client dependencies.
• Build the solution - the server dependencies will be installed, including:
  • EntityFrameworkCore, EntityFrameworkCore.Sqlite, and System.Linq.Dynamic.Core
  • LinqKit
• Launch the solution. The server and client launch together.

Usage

• Enter a search term in the text box. The search term can be any one of:
  • Mandarin character(s) ("traditional" or "simplified")
  • Pinyin (with or without tone markers such as "1", "2", "3", etc. - see below regarding the "Ignore Tones" option)
  • English
• You can use the wildcard character ("*") before and/or after the search term in order to perform "starts with", "ends with", or "contains" searches.
• Two kinds of searches are supported:
  • Literal search - the default. The dictionary is searched for the term as entered.
  • Multi-character search - tick the "Multi-character search" option. With this option selected, a search for a term that includes multiple Mandarin characters will return the combination of the search results for each individual character. This is useful to better understand the individual components of a Chinese word or phrase that consists of multiple characters.
• Check the "Ignore Tones" option if you are searching for a Pinyin term and wish to ignore tones. For example, a search for "zi" will return results for "zi1", "zi2", "zi3", and so forth.

Roadmap

• Complete the asynchronous support
• Add pagination and sorting to the search results table
• Add better formatting to the search results