# Data sourcing — JEE Main question bank

## Status

**`scripts/import_examgoal.py` imports 9,813 real JEE Main PYQs** (2002–2025,
all three subjects) from the MIT-licensed
[jee_mains_pyqs_data_base](https://github.com/HostServer001/jee_mains_pyqs_data_base)
release asset (`1762787474-DataBaseChapters-v007.pkl`, ~24 MB, 14,973 questions
total). The keep rule is: type=mcq, fully text (no `<img>` anywhere in
stem/options/explanation), exactly one correct option in A–D. Skipped: 1,909
image-questions, 2,875 answer-less, 19 multi-correct, ~357 with stray images
in options/explanations.

```
python3 scripts/import_examgoal.py path/to/app.db [--pkl db.pkl]
```

Safe to re-run: INSERTs skip stems already present, so the 24 hand-written
seed questions are never duplicated. Existing deployments pick up the new
`CREATE INDEX` statements on boot (`init_db` runs them idempotently).

The demo seed (`src/db.rs`, 24 hand-written questions) remains as the offline
fallback when the pickle cannot be fetched. `scripts/expand_seed.py` is kept
for synthetic load testing only.

## Attribution

Question content: [HostServer001/jee_mains_pyqs_data_base](https://github.com/HostServer001/jee_mains_pyqs_data_base)
(MIT), itself reverse-engineered from a subscription site's API and cached.
Upstream model credit: examgoal database schema. No NTA PDFs were scraped —
NTA publishes image-rendered PDFs with no machine-readable question text
(`pdftotext` yields only question IDs).

## Schema mapping

The bank is organized into the official NTA JEE Main syllabus units
(2026 Paper 1 B.E./B.Tech):

- Physics: 20 units (Units and Measurements through Electronic Devices)
- Chemistry: 21 units (Some Basic Concepts through Practical Chemistry)
- Maths: 14 units (Sets, Relations and Functions through Trigonometry)

`scripts/reorg_nta_units.py` maps upstream subtopics into these units by
keyword matching; stragglers are placed manually (documented in the script).

The 24 hand-written demo questions that previously shipped inside the seed
have been removed from the live bank: they were trivial one-liners that
diluted difficulty. A fresh install still seeds them so the app is not
empty before import (see src/db.rs), but they are labeled in the seed code
as demo content.

## Sanitizer contract (both sides match)

Write side (`import_examgoal.py::sanitize`) and read side
(`views.rs::rich`) share one allowlist: `br p sup sub b strong i em u ol ul
li table tbody thead tr th td span h3`, attributes always stripped,
`<picture>/<source>/<style>/<col>` blocks dropped whole. KaTeX renders
`$$..$$` display math and `\(..\)` inline at page load with `trust: false`.

## Adding more questions later

Re-run the importer against a newer pickle release. For NUM questions the
upstream data carries no answers, so they are excluded until a verified
answer source exists. The `answer` column for MCQ is a single letter.

## Why NUM answers are not extracted from explanations

Audited 2026-10-12: integer-question explanations do end with the numeric
result (`= 80`, `Total 11`, `is 8`), but the phrasing varies per question
(`Hence`, `Clearly`, `no. of integers in S is`, bare `= X` mid-derivation)
and several tails contain multiple numbers. A regex would mis-key a
meaningful fraction, and a wrong answer key teaches the wrong result —
worse than no question. NUM import stays out until NTA final answer keys
(authoritative per-shift source) are transcribed. The grader already
supports NUM with 0.1% tolerance for hand-added questions.

## Better-database search (2026-10-15 findings)

**Verdict: our current source (HostServer001 examgoal-derived, 9,813 questions)
remains the best publicly usable structured JEE Main bank.**

Repositories audited:

1. **thesrijankumar/Indian_Exams_PYQ** (GitHub, ~4 MB) — contains 223 JEE Main
   shift-wise PDFs (2020-2026) plus JEE Advanced. Sounds ideal, but:
   - All files are stored in **Git LFS**, and the LFS batch API returns no
     download URLs (free-tier bandwidth cap) — files are effectively
     inaccessible without authentication.
   - Even with access, they are **scanned PDFs**: NTA renders question text
     as images, so `pdftotext` yields only question IDs (verified earlier
     on NTA's own `cdnbbsr` PDFs). No text-layer exists to extract.
   - Use: a future per-shift "actual paper" mode could render these PDFs
     page-by-page as images, but not as structured questions.

2. **examgoal CDN images** — the 1,909 image-questions we skip at import
   reference `app-content.cdn.examgoal.net` / `imagex.cdn.examgoal.net`
   URLs. All return **403/404** without signed URLs. Hotlinking is a dead
   end; embedding them would also break whenever their CDN expires.

3. **jiteshtripathimath-lab / SBStudio07 / aryan-kronos** — marketing sites
   and Telegram bots, no structured data.

**Why "Hard mode feels easy"** (resolved):
- The 24 hand-written seed questions (Q1-Q24) were trivial one-liners
  mixed into the real bank. They are now **deleted** from the live DB.
- The difficulty labels come from the examgoal source's user-vote metadata,
  not from NTA. Distribution across 9,789 real PYQs: 4,007 Easy / 5,614
  Medium / 168 Hard. JEE Main genuinely has few "hard" questions per shift
  (~2-3 of 75); the exam's difficulty comes from time pressure, not
  per-question complexity. For a harder practice set, filter to Medium+Hard
  and recent years (2021+) — the builder supports both filters now.
- All 9,813 questions verified `exam='jee-main'` in source metadata
  (2002-2025, AIEEE-era questions included since AIEEE IS JEE Main's
  predecessor under the same NTA syllabus).