A Ruby script for converting MindMeister maps to Markdown.
The script has two main functions,
- list all your maps
- output a map as markdown
When run with no arguments, the script prints a menu of maps available for you to select:
Available MindMeister Maps
---
1: Software ( 2011-10-31 04:13:58 ) [ 117882387 ]
2: Internet Layer Protocols ( 2011-10-27 18:10:26 ) [ 120233062 ]
3: Network Layer ( 2011-10-27 16:41:09 ) [ 119115816 ]
4: HTML ( 2011-10-24 17:59:28 ) [ 117882606 ]
5: Newbie ( 2011-10-24 03:53:40 ) [ 119564927 ]
6: Ethernet ( 2011-10-24 03:53:00 ) [ 116616227 ]
7: My First iPad Map ( 2011-10-21 14:19:07 ) [ 119100256 ]
8: My First iPhone Map ( 2011-10-21 14:17:30 ) [ 119262965 ]
9: Threads ( 2011-10-20 15:14:29 ) [ 116945908 ]
10: Computer Hardware ( 2011-10-12 19:24:19 ) [ 117875898 ]
11: ACM Programming Tips ( 2011-10-11 04:03:21 ) [ 117550509 ]
12: Interprocess Communication ( 2011-10-04 02:54:56 ) [ 116511362 ]
Selection:
Optionally you can pass either the name of a map (case insensitive) or the map id (given in square brackets in the menu) as argument(s). Both of these would return the "My First iPad Map",
./mindmeister2md.rb my first ipad map
./mindmeister2md.rb 119100256
By default the script outputs the markdown to the screen. There is an optional command-line argument (-o) which will write the markdown to a file.
For the UNIX geeks: Only the generate markdown is sent to standard output (STDOUT). So the markdown can easily be piped to other commands,
./mindmeister2md.rb my first ipad map | wc -l
Each user needs to have a MindMeister api key and secret in order to use this script. There is a configuration file in the home directory named .mindmeister2md created automatically by the script the first time it is run.
By default the configuration file looks similar to this:
---
indent: 4
list_level: 2
api_key:
secret:
list_bullet: *
You get both api_key and secret from the MindMeister api request page. The other two options you can set are:
list_level
: The level in the map where lists should begin. At a list_level of 2, the first two levels of the map tree structure are represented as markdown headings, rather than as lists. A list_level of 0 will mean that the map will be exported as a single giant list.
list_bullet
: The character to use as the leading bullet in lists. Default is *, but "-" is commonly used in Markdown as well.
indent
: specifies the number of spaces that represent a single indent in the list.
Most of the configuration file can also be changed at run-time using optional command line arguments. There is also an option to simply print the maps without actually printing any of them out as well as output to a file.
Usage: mindmeister2md.rb [options] <map id | map name>
-l, --list
: List available maps and exit.
-i, --indent <indent>
: Set number of spaces for each indent level. Like temporarily setting indent in the configuration file.
-b, --bullet "<indent>"
: Select the character to use as the list bullet. Like temporarily setting list_bullet in the configuration file.
-s, --listlevel <list_level>
: Set the level at which lists should start. Like temporarily setting list_level in the configuration file.
-o, --output FILE
: Write output to FILE.
-h, --help
: Print command-line argument help.