Using sxolar from the Command Line

The sxolar library can be used from the command line to search for arXiv entries and display the results in a user-friendly format. This section provides an overview of how to use sxolar from the command line, including the available options and usage examples.

Installation

The command-line interface for sxolar is automatically installed when you install the sxolar library using pip. If you haven't installed sxolar yet, you can do so by running the following command:

pip install sxolar

Usage

The sxolar command-line interface provides a simple way to search for arXiv entries based on various criteria. There are presently the following commands available:

• sxolar query: Search for arXiv entries based on a query.
• sxolar summary: Display a human-readable summary of an arXiv search.

sxolar query

The sxolar query command allows you to search for arXiv entries based on a query. You can specify various search criteria such as the title, author, abstract, and publication date. Here is an example of how to use the sxolar search

sxolar search --title "quantum computing" --max-results 5

In this example, we search for arXiv entries related to quantum computing and specify that we want a maximum of 5 results. The next example shows more complicated usage of the sxolar search command:

sxolar search --title "quantum computing" \
  --author "John Doe" \
  --author "Jane Smith" \
  --trailing 100 \
  --max-results 50

In this example, we search for arXiv entries related to quantum computing that were authored by either John Doe or Jane Smith, and we specify that we want a maximum of 50 results. We also use the --trailing option to search for entries that were published in the last 100 days.

Post-Filtering and Increasing max-results

The --trailing option specifies the number of days from the current date to search for entries. For example, --trailing 100 searches for entries published in the last 100 days. Because this filter occurs after the search results are retrieved, it may decrease the number of results returned. In such cases, it is currently recommended to increase the number of results, you can use the --max-results option.

sxolar summary

The sxolar summary command allows you to display a human-readable summary of an arXiv search. You can specify the search criteria and the number of results to display.

Summaries Require Config Files

The sxolar summary command requires a configuration file. The configuration file is a YAML file that specifies the a set of named summaries. Each summary is a collection of sections, where each section is a formatted query. Each section / query can have a title, author, abstract, and other search criteria. More detail on the format of the configuration file can be found in the Configuration Files docs.

Here is an example of how to use the sxolar summary command:

sxolar summary --config-file config.yaml --name MySummary

In this example, we display a summary of the search summary named MySummary from the configuration file config.yaml. This configuration file should contain the search criteria for the query. An acceptable config file for the example above would look like this:

MySummary:
  - name: "Section 1"
    authors: ["Author A", "Author B"]
    alls: ["Topic X"]

This configuration file specifies a summary named MySummary with one section named Section 1. The section searches for entries with authors Author A or Author B and topics Topic X.