yarle: Yet Another Rope Ladder from Evernote

A tool that converts enex note(s) into Markdown format in order to let you escape from Evernote universe with all your belongings.

Features:

Works with enex files that contain single or multiple notes also.
Works with notes that contain pictures too.
Puts title, creation time, update time, tags, and latlong meta-information into md as metadata.
Updates md files' access and modification timestamps according to the notes' update time.
Organizes all attachments into a _resources subfolder (to keep the notes' folder as simple as possible).

Restrictions:

Notes of Web Clips are not supported (yet).

Installation

Install Node.js.
Clone or download this repo.
Open a terminal and navigate to the root folder of the repo.
Type npm i, it installs the dependencies.
Type npm run build to build the package.

Usage:

Those markdown notes that contains external resources such pictures or files, are stored in /<outputDir>/complexNotes subfolder, the simple plain-text ones go to /<outputDir>/simpleNotes folder.

Options:

--enexSource=<your-enex-file> or the folder of your enex files , specifies the exported Evernote notebook(s)
--outputDir=<relative_output_dir> , this is the main output dir in where the extracted markdown files are going to be created
--include-metadata , if it's set, then every markdown file will be extended by metadata (tags, time of creation, time of last update, lat-lon coordinates)
--zettelkasten , puts Zettelkasten Id (based on time of creation) at the beginning of the file name
--plaintext-notes-only , skips those notes, which has attachment, or picture in it.
--skip-latlng, does not include location into metadata section
--skip-creation-time, does not include creation time into metadata section
--skip-update-time, does not include update time into metadata section
--skip-tags , does not include tags into metadata section
--outputFormat, generates internal file links and highlights in Obsidian-style: highlights are going to be bounded by == instead of ` characters, file links are going to be as follows: ![[file-name]] instead of ![file-name](file-name). Possible values: ObsidianMD to get Obsidian-style notes, StandardMD or skip it completely, if you prefere Standard Markdown format.

Using cmd:

  npm run start -- --enexSource=GeneralNotes.enex --outputDir=./out --include-metadata --zettelkasten --plaintext-notes-only --outputFormat=ObsidianMD

In program:

 const options: YarleOptions = {
        enexFile: 'enexFile',
        outputDir: 'outputDir',
        isZettelkastenNeeded: true,
        isMetadataNeeded: false ,
    };
 yarle.dropTheRope(options);

Release notes

Version 2.9.2

Issue#49 fixed
Issue#53 fixed

Version 2.9.1

Enclosing brackets around links are removed to avoid causing troubles in MD file (fixes: Issue#50)

Version 2.9.0

NodeJs version limitation resolved.
Feature requested in Issue#39 implemented: the conversion returns the number of the failed notes if any.
Logo added to readme.
Previously if unit tests were executed in timezone differs from Western Europe, they were failed. It's fixed now.
Bug reported in Issue#39 fixed.
Action added to test Yarle in different Node versions.

Special thanks to Rodrigo Vieira for the contribution!

Version 2.8.0

New command-line argument introduced : --outputFormat. Its optional, one possible value is ObsidianMD that configures Yarle to generate internal file links and highlights in Obsidian-style.

Version 2.7.0

Huge performance improvement, works with enex files that contain 2k+ notes
Bugfix: generates OS-friendly file and folder names

Version 2.6.6

Logging improved
Bug around tag extraction fixed

Version 2.6.5

Bugfix: handling internal resource files (with no filenames) correctly

Version 2.6.4

Small bugfixes

Version 2.6.1

Attached images are converted as standard Markdown images instead of as wikistyle-links.

Version 2.6.0

Highlights supported
Typescript building bugfix

Version 2.5.0

Generating links in wiki-style links is supported by default, its command line argument is removed.
Evernote's internal links among the notes are supported in the case if the note title and its created reference is the same text.

Version 2.4.1

As a hotfix notes within resources (e.g. web clips) are skipped to be referenced from the generated Markdown files.

Version 2.4.0

Folders can be added as input, in this case all the enex files within this folder will be transformed
Zettelkasten IDs are unique, if multiple notes has been created in the same minute, then they will be indexed by numbers starting from 1 (except the first, it has no index)

Version 2.3.2

Bugfix: untitled notes' title is removed from the generated filename if Zettelkasten is required.
Bugfix: tags are moved to the top and # added as prefix for each if it's missing.

Version 2.3.0

Skipping parts of metadata in configurable via options

Version 2.2.0

Links are generated in wiki-style links ([[link]]) if --wikistyle-media-links option is set
Bugfix: Notes with single resources are exported fine
Codebase refactored

Version 2.1.1

Conversion of tables, lists, numbered lists and checkboxes are supported.

Version 2.0.4

plaintext-notes-only command line argument added, that enables you to skip converting notes with any resources, pictures, pdf, etc.

Version 2.0.1:

The whole tool is reimplemented in Typescript
ZettelKasten ID is an option for filename generation (format is |(pipe) <title>.md or .md if there is no title)

version 1.2.0, fixes and improvements:

File name conventions changed (whitespaces are generated instead of underscores)
Metadata is moved at the end of the text and transformed as code snippet (looks better in Ulysses)
Fix on HTML to MD conversion (turndown package is configured better to do not add multiple newline characters )

mescalito/yarle