LuisRei.com

I mentioned in a previous post that I was using a private WordPress blog to keep my notes. Not anymore. I migrated to Evernote.

Thanks to Maria Joao Valente for sending me the invite to evernote.

Evernote is a note organizers, similar to Journler which I used a while back.

Check out the About Evernote and their screencast. My highlights:
* Web client
* Desktop client
* Works with Mobile Devices
* Painless, automatic synchronization (think gmail + IMAP but better)
* Notes can be found by searching and filtering for text within images
* Clip (via bookmarklet) or email entire webpages into your account
* Can import html files (you’ll see why this was important for me)

See also: Wired Review and TUAW Review.

Migrating between applications has never been an easy task. In this case I need to migrate from a WordPress blog to evernote. I could manually click “Clip to Evernote” for each post on that blog or I could’ve written a simple AppleScript to do it or I could probably have found a way to do it in Javascript or I could’ve taken advantage of the “clip” thing in another way. But off course I choose the hardest way possible - I wrote a python script to convert the WordPress XML Export File to multiple HTML notes and then dragged those files to evernote. At least it was fun if a colossal waste of time…

Anyway here’s the python script in case you ever want to convert a wordpress blog (or more accurately a WordPress XML Export File) to html files.

wpdepress.py

# Copyright (c) 2008 Luis Rei
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
# of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
# in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
# to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
# all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
# THE SOFTWARE.

# Notes:
# - currently does not handle images, attachments or comments
# - was only tested on MacOS X (10.5)
# - not "carefully" developed e.g. poor exception handling, little testing, ...
# - see also http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/06/12/xml-import-export/

import string, os, sys, getopt
from xml.dom import minidom

__author__ = 'Luis Rei (luis.rei@gmail.com)'
__homepage__ = 'http://luisrei.com'
__version__ = '1.0'
__date__ = '2008/03/23'

def convert(infile, outdir, authorDirs, categoryDirs):
    """Convert WordPress Export File to multiple html files.

    Keyword arguments:
    infile -- the location of the WordPress Export File
    outdir -- the directory where the files will be created
    authorDirs -- if true, create different directories for each author
    categoryDirs -- if true, create directories for each category

    """

    # First we parse the XML file into a list of posts.
    # Each post is a dictionary

    dom = minidom.parse(infile)

    blog = [] # list that will contain all posts

    for node in dom.getElementsByTagName('item'):
    	post = dict()

    	post["title"] = node.getElementsByTagName('title')[0].firstChild.data
    	post["date"] = node.getElementsByTagName('pubDate')[0].firstChild.data
    	post["author"] = node.getElementsByTagName(
    	                'dc:creator')[0].firstChild.data
    	post["id"] = node.getElementsByTagName('wp:post_id')[0].firstChild.data

    	if node.getElementsByTagName('content:encoded')[0].firstChild != None:
    	    post["text"] = node.getElementsByTagName(
    	                    'content:encoded')[0].firstChild.data
    	else:
    	    post["text"] = ""

    	# wp:attachment_url could be use to download attachments

    	# Get the categories
    	tempCategories = []
    	for subnode in node.getElementsByTagName('category'):
    		 tempCategories.append(subnode.getAttribute('nicename'))
    	categories = [x for x in tempCategories if x != '']
    	post["categories"] = categories 

    	# Add post to the list of all posts
    	blog.append(post)

    # Then we create the directories and HTML files from the list of posts.

    # The "base" directory
    outdir += "/wordpress/"
    if os.path.exists(outdir) == False:
        os.makedirs(outdir)
    os.chdir(outdir)

    for post in blog:
        # The "category" directories
        path = ""
        if authorDirs == True:
            path += post["author"].encode('utf-8'  + "/"

        # This creates a path for the file in the format
        # category1/category2/category3/file. Note that the category list was
        # sorted.

        if categoryDirs == True:
            if (post["categories"] != None):
                path += string.join(post["categories"],"/&quot  

        if os.path.exists(path) == False and path != "":
            os.makedirs(path)

        # And finally the file itself
        path = outdir + path
        title = post["title"].encode('utf-8' 
        filename = path + "/" + post["id"] + ' - ' + title \
                    + '.html'

        # Add a meta tag to specify charset (UTF-  in the HTML file
        meta = """"""

        f = open(filename, 'w' 
        f.write(meta+"\n&quot  

        # Add "HTML header"
        start = "\n\n\n\n\n"
        f.write(start)

        # Convert the unicode object to a string that can be written to a file
        # with the proper encoding (UTF- 
        text = post["text"].encode('utf-8'  

        # Replace simple newlines with
 + newline so that the HTML file
        # represents the original post more accuratelly
        text = text.replace("\n", "
\n&quot  

        f.write(text)

        # Finalize HTML
        end = "\n\n"
        f.write(end)

        f.close()

def usage(pname):
    """Displays usage information

    keyword arguments:
    pname — program name (e.g. obtained as argv[0])

    """

    print """python %s [-hac] [-o outdir] infile
    Converts a WordPress Export File to multiple html files.

    Options:
        -h,–help\tDisplays this information.
        -a,–authors\tCreate different directories for each author.
        -c,–categories\tCreate directory structure from post categories.
        -o,–outdir\tSpecify a directory for the output.

    Example:
    python %s -c -o ~/TEMP ~/wordpress.2008-03-20.xml
        """ % (pname, pname)

def main(argv):
    outdir = ""
    authors = False
    categories = False

    try:
		opts, args = getopt.getopt(
		    argv[1:], "ha:o:c", ["help", "authors", "outdir", "categories"])
    except getopt.GetoptError, err:
		print str(err)
		usage(argv[0])
		sys.exit(2)

    for opt, arg in opts:
		if opt in ("-h", "–help"):
			usage(argv[0])
			sys.exit()
		elif opt in ("-a", "–authors"):
			authors = True
		elif opt in ("-c", "–categories"):
		    categories = True
		elif opt in ("-o", "–outdir"):
		    outdir = arg

    infile = "".join(args)

    if infile == "":
	    print "Error: Missing Argument: missing wordpress export file."
	    usage(argv[0])
	    sys.exit(3)

    if outdir == "":
	    # Use the current directory
	    outdir = os.getcwd()

    convert(infile, outdir, authors, categories)

if __name__ == "__main__":
	main(sys.argv)