DEV Community: Aissa Laribi

🚀 StudyQuiz v0.1.0 — FastAPI Quiz Engine with Spaced Repetition & CLI Quiz Attempts

Aissa Laribi — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 23:11:21 +0000

A CLI-based learning tool with Fisher-Yates shuffling and SuperMemo 2 — built to help me (and maybe you) study smarter, not harder.

🧠 Why I Built StudyQuiz

Flashcards helped me memorize, but they didn't help with deep understanding.

I tried Anki, Quizlet, even Python scripts but nothing clicked.

What I needed was:

Multiple-choice quizzes per chapter, not per flashcard.
A learning algorithm like SuperMemo 2 for spaced repetition.
A fast, testable backend I could expand over time.

So I built StudyQuiz.

🔧 Tech Stack

🐍 Python
⚡ FastAPI + Async SQLAlchemy
🐘 PostgreSQL
🧪 Pytest + test DB reset fixture
💡 CLI-based quiz attempts for now (browser UI coming soon)

✅ What’s in `v0.1.0`

✅ Batch creation of:
- Users
- Modules
- Quizzes
- Questions + Answers (nested JSON)
✅ Fisher-Yates question shuffling
✅ SuperMemo 2 spaced repetition
✅ Quiz attempts that:
- Record scores
- Schedule follow-ups
- Run in the terminal
✅ Fully tested core

🖥️ How to Run

1) Clone the repo
2) Install dependencies

3) Run the app:

uvicorn app.main:app --reload

4) Use Swagger UI:

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs

🎮 The quiz runs interactively in your terminal after the POST is triggered.

🧭 Next: A Guide for CLI + Leveraging ChatGPT for Batch Queries

Before building the UI, I’ll publish a step-by-step guide on:

🖥️ How to use StudyQuiz from the terminal

🧠 How to leverage ChatGPT to:

Generate quiz questions and answers in batch

Summarize slides and course material

Study smarter, faster, and with deeper understanding

🎯 The goal: help early adopters get real value before the full frontend arrives

🔜 What’s Coming in v0.2.0

🌐 Full browser UI with Svelte + TailwindCSS
🧪 More test coverage (attempts, followups)

⭐ Try It + Feedback

Here’s the repo:

🔗 github.com/aissa-laribi/studyquiz

Star it ⭐ if you like it
Raise issues 💬 if something breaks

💬 Let’s Connect

Ask me questions here or find me on GitHub

Thanks for reading 🙏

🚀 Introducing StudyQuiz: A Project Born from Struggle & Curiosity

Aissa Laribi — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 21:12:35 +0000

🚀 Why I Built StudyQuiz: A Spaced Repetition Tool for Real Learning

This academic year, I wanted to improve how I learn, not just how much. I turned to the proven technique of spaced repetition and started using Anki. At first, it was exciting: I could organize flashcards by chapter and review them based on performance (Again, Hard, Good, Easy).

But in the long run, it didn’t work for me.

❌ Why Flashcards Fell Short

The spaced repetition applied to individual flashcards, not chapters or topics.

Flashcards encouraged memorization, but CS requires deep understanding of systems, logic, and code.

Each module had ~100 slides per week, and I had 6 modules.As result, I couldn’t keep up with both flashcard creation and proper study.

So I gave up on flashcards.

✅ Enter: MCQs + ChatGPT (Free Tier)

Some modules used MCQs for continuous assessment. That sparked an idea:
I wrote a Python script to run simple True/False quizzes in the terminal — powered by ChatGPT-generated questions.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was fast, effective, and helped me score well.

💡 Then Came the Trigger (Paid Tier)

In one final exam, the MCQs had two plausible answers, three distractors, and only one correct. The lecturer even encouraged us to use ChatGPT to generate practice questions.

That’s when it clicked:

ChatGPT wasn’t just for brainstorming, it was a tool for deep learning.

It helped me understand the material by summarizing slides, explaining concepts, providing examples, and testing me.

Still, something was missing: spaced repetition.

I explored Quizlet, Kahoot, and others but none of them offered what I needed.

🛠️ So I Built It Myself

I had experience with:

Python, HTML/CSS, Java, WordPress, WooCommerce API
A bit of JavaScript, PHP, MySQL
Projects using Flask and Django

But for this project, I needed:

A fast development cycle
A framework suitable for frequent user input
Simple DB mapping

That’s why I chose FastAPI and built StudyQuiz.

🧠 What StudyQuiz Does

A web app that combines:

✅ MCQ-based quizzes
🔄 Fisher-Yates question shuffling
🧠 Spaced repetition (SuperMemo 2)
💻 CLI-based quiz taking
🌐 Soon: full browser-based UI

🔗 GitHub link

💬 I’d love feedback — especially from folks in edtech, CS education, or backend development!

cmagick v.0.1.4

Aissa Laribi — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 17:14:49 +0000

Hi guys!

Just sharing the new release of cmagick.

What's new?
The functionalities are exactly the same:

Convert images
Resize images

The main difference is about the test coverage of 100% and the removal of hard sys exit command that is unnecessary.

Why I have build cmagick?
I explained the reasons in the following post https://dev.to/aissalaribi/cmagick-v012-hn8

The main features of cmagick v.0.1.4

Converting images to the following formats (bmp,eps,gif,tiff,webp,wbmp,tga,png,jpg,jpeg,hdr,exr)
Resizing Images
Support path arguments

Simple usage

Examples:

To convert images

from cmagick import cmagick

cmagick.convert('website.jpg', 'website.webp')

To resize images

from cmagick import cmagick

cmagick.resize('website.jpg','100x100','website.jpg')

To convert and save in a defined directory

from cmagick import cmagick

cmagick.convert('website.jpg', '/Desktop/newname.webp')

Thank you for reading this small post🙏!

Connect with me on GitHub and pls put ✨star✨ for this package

cmagick v.0.1.2

Aissa Laribi — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 00:04:52 +0000

Hi guys!

I have just built a Python package that converts, and resizes images

Why I have build cmagick?

Before I have used Pillow and I had problems importing the "convert" module in AWS Lambda, then I have used Wand which was amazing because I have managed to build a serverless image resizer on AWS Lambda, and then I wanted to build a serverless application that converts to WebP and I have struggled with Wand to link with libwebp in the Lambda runtime.

As a result, I have decided to do roughly the same thing as Wand but instead of binding C programming language with Python, I am binding the input of the commands on the Linux CLI and Python.

The main features of cmagick v.0.1.2

Converting images to the following formats (bmp,eps,gif,tiff,webp,wbmp,tga,png,jpg,jpeg,hdr,exr)
Resizing Images
Support path arguments

Simple usage

Examples:

To convert images

from cmagick import cmagick

cmagick.convert('website.jpg', 'website.webp')

To resize images

from cmagick import cmagick

cmagick.resize('website.jpg','100x100','website.jpg')

To convert and save in a defined directory

from cmagick import cmagick

cmagick.convert('website.jpg', '/Desktop/newname.webp')

Thank you for reading this small post🙏!

Connect with me on GitHub and pls put ✨star✨ for this package

How to Backup Locally a Remote Mysql Database on Linux

Aissa Laribi — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 20:22:31 +0000

1) Make sure the Mysql server can listen for connections from the Internet

The Mysql server uses the MySQL Bind-Address tool that enables to determine which connections the server listens.
For Debian-based distros:
The Mysql bind-address is explicitly configured in /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld/mysqld.cnf
For RedHat-based distros:
The Mysql bind-address has to be configured in /etc/my.cnf

There are three basic ways to configure bind-address:

bind-address = 127.0.0.1 which means the server listen on only connections from the server itself
bind-address = 0.0.0.0 which means the server listen on any connections from the Internet
bind-address = A defined IP address or range which means the server will listen on connections from the defined IP address or range.

For security reasons, it would make sense to set the bind-address to a defined address. However, in addition to the bind-address tool there is a another feature that set where users are allowed to connect from. We will set it after having configured the bind-address.

Get your Public IP address (Ignore this step if you want to let the server to listen on any connections over the Internet)

curl ifconfig.me

2.Set the bind-address to listen on the desired network
For Debian-based distros:
For nano editor

nano /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf

For vim editor

vi /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf

Find the bind-address line and set it either on
bind-address = Your IP address or bind-address = 0.0.0.0

For RedHat-based distros:
For nano editor

nano /etc/my.cnf

For vim editor

vi /etc/my.cnf

Under [mysqld]
Add bind-address = Your IP address or bind-address = 0.0.0.0

Now the bind-address is set, we still cannot backup the data
base remotely

2) Allowing The Database to Get Accessed From Your Public IP Address

1.Check what users exist

sudo mysql -u <user-name> -p

Then enter your password.

Now check the users registered in the database

SELECT User, Host from mysql.user;

Here we can see only a root user allowed to connect from 127.0.0.1 ==> IPv4 Localhost, ::1 ==> IPv6 Localhost, ip-172-31-84-33.ec2.internal ==> Private IP address allocated by AWS to this instance; and localhost.

As a result, there is no user that can access from the Internet(0.0.0.0) to the server. So you need to register a new user with a specific host (IP address)

Open a new tab in your terminal and type:

curl ifconfig.me

Now go back to the previous tab and type:

CREATE USER 'user_name'@'Your_Public_IP_Address' IDENTIFIED BY 'Your_Password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user_name'@'Your_Public_IP_Address' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Now let see our databases

SHOW DATABASES;

And backup a database, in this example I want to backup the sample database.

To do so, execute the following command

sudo mysqldump --user <username> -h <IP_server> -p <database_name> > <file_name>.sql

Check the file where the database has been dumped

cat <file_name>.sql

The following picture shows the beginning of the database

The following picture shows some content of the database; and we can see some Personal Informations such as (Age,First Name,Surname,email address,Gender, Favorite Color)
Those Personal Informations are fictive and been randomly created

Creating Unique IDs programmatically on DynamoDB

Aissa Laribi — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 15:08:14 +0000

Create a DynamoDB Table

Leave the Partition Key Set To String, this way it will be easier to create Unique Ids Identifiers because unlike MySQL Databases DynamoDB will not generate an auto increment ID. Furthermore, if we select Number or Binaries, there will be a conflict between DynamoDB and the
uuid library because they respectively use different decimal calculation.

Go to the Terminal and create an uuid

Copy and paste the uuid, and create the item on the table

Create a put_dynamodb function

Go to Configuration Permissions, Click on the Role Name and Attach the DynamoDbFullAccess policy to this Role

First check if we can retrieve the data

import json
import uuid
import boto3

db = boto3.client('dynamodb')


def lambda_handler(event, context):
    data = db.scan(TableName='database')
    return {
        'statusCode': 200,
        'body': json.dumps('Success')
    }

Let's test the function

Now, let's add a new item and an auto generated id with uuid module, and test the function

import json
import uuid
import boto3

db = boto3.client('dynamodb')
id_db=uuid.uuid4()


def lambda_handler(event, context):
    data= db.put_item(TableName='database', Item={'id':{'S':str(id_db)},'item':{'S':'iphone-10'},'available':{'BOOL': False}})
    return {
        'statusCode': 200,
        'body': json.dumps('Success')
    }

Let's write the exact same code except that we are going to add a color attribute.

import json
import uuid
import boto3

db = boto3.client('dynamodb')
id_db=uuid.uuid4()


def lambda_handler(event, context):
    data= db.put_item(TableName='database', Item={'id':{'S':str(id_db)},'item':{'S':'iphone-10'},'available':{'BOOL': False},'color':{'S':'pink'}})
    return {
        'statusCode': 200,
        'body': json.dumps('Success')
    }

Now let's check our database

As you can see we haven't entered any id manually, and they have been generated programmatically.

How to use Beautiful Soup in AWS Lambda for Web Scraping

Aissa Laribi — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 00:59:19 +0000

The purpose of this post is to show how to use the Beautiful Soup module in AWS Lambda with Python Runtimes.Keep in mind, AWS Lambda is not integrated with all the modules available for Python. And the only way to import the modules to Lambda is to bundle the lambda function alongside the modules in an isolated environment.

The idea is similar to containers, we create an isolated environment, we import only the dependencies we need to make our application working, we write our code, we bundle it and we export it to the Cloud.

1) Install Pipenv

Pipenv is the module that will enable us to create an isolated environment for our lambda function.

For Debian:

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install python-pip
pip3 install pipenv

For RPM:

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo yum install python-pip
pip3 install pipenv

2) Create a Python 3.8 environment

At the time I am writing, the documentation for Beautiful Soup has been written for Python 3.8 https://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/bs4/doc/ . As result,we need a Python 3.8 isolated environment. Let's create it:

pipenv --python 3.8

pipenv shell

3) Install our bs4 dependency

pip install bs4

4) Write the Lambda function
Create a file name lambda_function.py, it's very important to name it "lambda_function.py", otherwise the Lambda handler will not work
Copy the code supplied in the following link, paste it onto the the lambda_function.py file, and save it. https://github.com/aissa-laribi/bs4-in-lambda/blob/main/lambda_function.py

5) Bundle up the lambda function and the dependencies

Now it's time to move the lambda function alongside the dependencies of our environment.

cp lambda_function.py ~/.local/share/virtualenvs/<yourenvname>/lib/python3.8/site-packages
cd ~/.local/share/virtualenvs/<yourenvname>/lib/python3.8/site-packages
ls

And normally, you should be able to see your lambda function alongside the dependencies.

Now, we need to zip the whole directory

zip -r9 bs4_in_lambda.zip *
cp bs4_in_lambda.zip ~/Desktop
cd  ~/Desktop

**
6) Upload the Zip File to your Lambda Function****

Then, create a Lambda Function, and make sure that Python 3.8 Runtime is selected.

Go to Code and in the top right corner, click on Upload from

And select the Zip file we have created.

The Lambda function will show up and we can see on the left side all the pip packages stored in folders.

Then go to Configuration and increase the runtime because there are 10 pages to be scraped.

Let's set a 5 minute runtime to make sure it will scrape all the pages.

Then,return to Code > Test.

Leave the Configuration Test content by default and add any name to the Event Name and Save.

Click on Test.

And sometimes we will get this error message.

The trick is to switch between http and https in our function.

Press Ctrl + F Scroll Down and replace all "https" with "http", Deploy and test the function.

Et Voila!
We have a list of websites.

Then go to Monitor > Logs > Click in the LogStream of the first invocation.Then, a new window will open, and you will get access to the full list.