Exporting notes from app 'reminder'

The app 'reminders' (spanish name 'Notas') stores the notes in the directory ~/.local/share/com.ubuntu.reminders/@local as:

$ cat notes.cache
[notebooks]
4d853cee-9476-4e19-82fe-5f577b01698e=2

[notes]
a0ae2c53-1c7d-4d2a-b1c5-ea876e3f4ca1=10
da5e2110-d1a8-4470-a8bc-d5115720db57=21
efc58768-d28a-4df0-9e41-4893e5c2af54=2

deleted notes stay in the directory, like this one:

note-09f23799-df97-40f9-b4ff-6835688ed644.enml  (a deleted one)

they are just not referenced in the notes.cache file, like this one which is still valid:

note-efc58768-d28a-4df0-9e41-4893e5c2af54.enml  (a valid one)

for every note exist two files, a .info file and the note itself in .enml file:

$ ls -C1
note-09f23799-df97-40f9-b4ff-6835688ed644.enml
note-09f23799-df97-40f9-b4ff-6835688ed644.info
note-a0ae2c53-1c7d-4d2a-b1c5-ea876e3f4ca1.enml
note-a0ae2c53-1c7d-4d2a-b1c5-ea876e3f4ca1.info
notebook-4d853cee-9476-4e19-82fe-5f577b01698e.info
note-da5e2110-d1a8-4470-a8bc-d5115720db57.enml
note-da5e2110-d1a8-4470-a8bc-d5115720db57.info
note-efc58768-d28a-4df0-9e41-4893e5c2af54.enml
note-efc58768-d28a-4df0-9e41-4893e5c2af54.info
notes.cache

the *.enml files contain the notes itself, HTML snipsets packed in XML, text is in UTF-8 encoded (enotacion format):

$ cat note-efc58768-d28a-4df0-9e41-4893e5c2af54.enml
<?xml version="1.0"?><!DOCTYPE en-note SYSTEM "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/enml2.dtd"><en-note>
<p style=" margin-top:12px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; padding-left:0px; text-indent:0px;"><br/></p>
<p style=" margin-top:12px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; padding-left:0px; text-indent:0px;">9 de septiembre</p>
<p style=" margin-top:12px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; padding-left:0px; text-indent:0px;"><br/></p>
<ul><li>día de compras en la tienda de la Coop. Possidenti Oliveti Limone sul Garda, por unos 88 euro aceite del lugar, vino, etc.</li>
<li>gasolinera 43 euro, debe alcanzar la casa,</li>
<li>...<br/></li></ul></en-note>

as the titel of the note is stored in the *.info file, it is a good idea to repeat the title in the note itself, for example if you have one note for any day, as I did showed it here with title "9 de septiembre";

With the help of Michael Zanetti [e-mail] I got to work a small Qt5 application to parse the structure of the *.info file:

https://code.launchpad.net/~mzanetti/+junk/infodump

#include <QCoreApplication>
#include <QSettings>
#include <QDebug>
#include <QDateTime>
#include <QStringList>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);

    if (a.arguments().count() < 2) {
        qDebug() << "Error: No info file given";
        qDebug() << "usage:" << a.arguments().at(0) << "<infofile>";
        return 1;
    }
    qDebug() << "File:" << a.arguments().at(1);
    QSettings s(a.arguments().at(1), QSettings::IniFormat);
    qDebug() << "Title:" << s.value("title").toString();
    // qDebug() << "Tagline:" << s.value("tagline").toString().trimmed();
    qDebug() << "Created:" << s.value("created").toDateTime().toString("yyyy-MM-dd");
    qDebug() << "Updated:" << s.value("updated").toDateTime().toString("yyyy-MM-dd");
    // qDebug() << "Created:" << s.value("created").toString();
    // qDebug() << "Created:" << s.value("created").toDateTime().toMSecsSinceEpoch()/1000;
    return 0;
}

I compiled this in my chroot'ed env an use it together with a small shell script to export the files day by day:

#!/bin/sh

cd ~/.local/share/com.ubuntu.reminders/@local

foundnotes=0

while read line; do
  echo $line | fgrep -q '[notes]' && {
    foundnotes=1
    continue
  }
  if [ $foundnotes = 1 ]; then
    name=`echo $line | sed 's/=.*$//'`
    /home/phablet/myRoot/home/phablet/infodump/infodump note-$name.info > /tmp/info 2>&1
    title=`fgrep Title: /tmp/info | sed 's/Title: "//' | sed 's/"//g' | sed 's/ /-/g'`
    created=`fgrep Created: /tmp/info | sed 's/Created: "//' | sed 's/"//g'`
    updated=`fgrep Updated:  /tmp/info | sed 's/Updated: "//' | sed 's/"//g'`
    echo /tmp/${updated}:${title}.txt
    cat note-$name.enml > /tmp/${updated}:${title}.txt
  else
    continue
  fi
done < notes.cache

exit

The files end up in /tmp and can be fetched from there by SSH:

$ ls -l /tmp/*.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 phablet phablet 1122 sep 15 15:28 /tmp/2015-09-09:7-de-septiembre.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 phablet phablet  961 sep 15 15:28 /tmp/2015-09-09:8-de-septiembre.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 phablet phablet 1457 sep 15 15:28 /tmp/2015-09-09:9-de-septiembre.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 phablet phablet 2871 sep 15 15:28 /tmp/2015-09-11:10-de-septiembre.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 phablet phablet 1798 sep 15 15:28 /tmp/2015-09-11:11-de-septiembre.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 phablet phablet  980 sep 15 15:28 /tmp/2015-09-12:12-de-septiembre.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 phablet phablet  402 sep 15 15:28 /tmp/2015-09-15:13-de-septiembre.txt

Last updated: Wed Oct 28 20:05:11 CET 2015