Out of Wordpress.com and Into Evernote.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

[sourcecode language='python']

# 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"],”/”)

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-8) in the HTML file
meta = “”"”"”

f = open(filename, ‘w’)
f.write(meta+”\n”)

# 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-8)
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”)

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)[/sourcecode]

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