Export OmniFocus data to Taskwarrior

WARNING: This project is provided as a courtesy and convenience for those that are looking to move their data from OmniFocus to Taskwarrior -- no claim is made that it will work for you, or that your data will be converted in a manner that satisfies you, and no unpaid support will be provided. See the support section below for more details.

This script is best suited for those that aren't afraid to dig into the code when things don't work right the first time!

Requirements

Python >= 2.7.x
pendulum

Usage

In OmniFocus

Configure the 'Outline' section to contain those items you want exported

Only those items that are visible are exported, so if your Perspective is configured to hide items that you want exported, make the necessary adjustments
The export mode will depend on the 'Project hierarchy' setting you have enabled. For a flat list of actions with no associated projects, disable the hierarchy, for a hierarchical project list of actions, enable the hierarchy. See below for more information on how the hierarchy is exported into a format Taskwarrior can work with.

Select File -> Export... from the top menu, and export the file as CSV.

On the machine running the Taskwarrior client:

Load the CSV file to the machine with Taskwarrior installed, along with the omnifocus-to-taskwarrior.py script.
Make sure omnifocus-to-taskwarrior.py is executable then run omnifocus-to-taskwarrior.py -h to see the list of available arguments for the script.
Run the script with your chosen arguments to generate a JSON file format suitable for import by Taskwarrior. If you get any errors, you're on your own to figure it out ;)
The generated JSON file is fairly easy to inspect to see if the data is coming out the way you want it. The Taskwarrior JSON format specification can help guide you.
Import the data into Taskwarrior via: task import [json_filename], and for heaven's sake make a backup of any existing Taskwarrior data beforehand!

Supported data conversions

  Task ID -> Used to programmatically calculate project/subproject hierarchy
  Type -> Not used, project/task status calculated by hierarchy
  Name -> description
  Status -> Not used, calculated from other values
  Project -> Not used, calculated from other values
  Context -> tags (optional)
  Start Date -> scheduled ('wait' optional)
  Due Date -> due
  Completion Date -> end
  Duration -> Not currently used
  Flagged -> priority (H) or 'flagged' tag (optional)
  Notes -> notes (optional)

How project hierarchies are calculated

OmniFocus and Taskwarrior have different approaches to how projects and actions (tasks) are organized, and this requires that some adjustments be made in the translation.

Taskwarrior cannot have projects with no tasks, nor does it have any outlining capability for tasks (tasks can be made 'dependant' on other tasks, but not simply live beneath other tasks in an outline fashion).

If you choose to keep a project hierarchy, here's what you need to know about the conversion:

Only those items at the very deepest part of a particular hierarchy (the 'leaves') are considered to be tasks.
Everything else is either a top-level project, or if it's somewhere under a top-level project, it is a subproject via Taskwarrior's dot notation (eg. MyProject.MySubproject)
If notes are exported, any notes attached to something determined to be a project or subproject will have a task created under that particular project or subproject with a description of 'Notes'

The bottom line is that if you have really deep nesting and you use the project hierarchy, you could end up with unusably long project names. The rational options in this case seem to be:

Flatten out your hierarchy more
Use short names for projects/subprojects

Other caveats

Notes - Taskwarrior doesn't have proper multiline notes, so if notes are exported, they live in a 'notes' UDA. Also due to this current bug, all newlines are replaced by a ###NEWLINE### token, and you'll have to figure out how to deal with making that easily displayable/editable. I currently use the OneNote script I wrote. :)
Context - Hierarchical contexts are not exported, only the final context in the hierarchy
Folders - Not exported, if you want to keep that hierarchy, turn it into a project in OmniFocus

Support

Issue tracking is disabled for this repository, and no bug reports, feature requests or support requests will be addressed.

For all support-related issues, including configuration, usage, and training, consider hiring a competent consultant.

Pull requests will be considered should you wish to contribure to the already massive amount of freely available work that went into this project... ;)

thehunmonkgroup/omnifocus-to-taskwarrior