✨ Kindle Pretty Sync Notion template

🍴 a fork of kindle-to-notion

Before you can run the sync, you need to complete the setup section.

First, create a new GitHub repository.

To sync your highlights, just upload the new My Clippings.txt file into your GitHub repo. It will trigger a GitHub Action to sync the newly added highlights to your Notion books database.

• Duplicate my Notion books database as a template in your Notion account. You don't need to clone the contents of the database. You only need to database table. This will serve as your Notion books database.

• Create a new internal integration at https://www.notion.so/my-integrations and copy the Notion API key.

• Go to your Notion dashboard. Open your books database as a page. Click on the three dots icon (more options) and go to Add connection. Search for the integration you created in the previous step and add it as a connection.

• On the Notion books database page, go to Share and click on Copy link to get the URL of the Notion database.

• Now, extract the Database Id from the link as shown in the example below:

  Book Database Link: https://www.notion.so/arkalim/346be84507ff482b80fceb4024deadc2?v=e868075eaf5749bc941e617e651295fb
  Book Database Id: 346be84507ff482b80fceb4024deadc2
  

• Connect your Kindle E-Reader to your computer. Navigate to Kindle ➡ documents and copy My Clippings.txt.

• Create a GitHub repository and add your My Clippings.txt to the root of the repository. Now, add a file sync.yaml to the repository at location .github/workflows with the following content:

  name: Sync Kindle Highlights
  on: [push, workflow_dispatch]
  jobs:
    sync-highlights:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      steps:
        - name: Checkout repository
          uses: actions/checkout@v3
  
        - name: Sync highlights
          uses: addnab/docker-run-action@v3
          with:
            image: ghcr.io/brookekelseyryan/kindle-to-notion-pretty-sync:master
            run: node /code/dist/main.js
            options: |
              -v ${{ github.workspace }}:/code/resources 
              -e BOOK_DB_ID=${{ vars.BOOK_DB_ID }}
              -e NOTION_API_KEY=${{ secrets.NOTION_API_KEY }}
  
        - name: Commit cache changes
          uses: EndBug/add-and-commit@v7
          with:
            message: Commit cache changes
            add: sync.json
  
        - name: Push cache changes
          uses: ad-m/github-push-action@master
          with:
            github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
  

• The above step will trigger a GitHub action to sync the highlights. But, it will fail as you haven't yet setup the NOTION_API_KEY and the BOOK_DB_ID. To do that, go to the GitHub repository settings, click on Secrets and Variables and then click on Actions. Now, create a secret by the name NOTION_API_KEY and a variable by the name BOOK_DB_ID, with their corresponding values as obtained in the previous steps.

• Now, you need to allow GitHub Action to save the cache (make updates) to the repository. For that, go to repository settings. Click on Actions and then on General. Scroll down to Workflow permissions and select Read and write permissions.

• You can now manually trigger the GitHub Action by going to the Actions tab in the GitHub repo. This will sync the highlights for the first time and create a sync.json file (cache) in the repository. Afterwards, whenever you want to sync your highlights, just upload the new My Clippings.txt file into your GitHub repo. It will automatically trigger the action to sync the newly added highlights.

For reference on how to setup your repo, take a look at @arkalim's Kindle Highlights Repo

• The Google Books API is used to search for a book cover. It searches Google Books for a high-quality (i.e. medium or large size) cover image for the first two entries of the Google Books Search by querying the book title. If no high-quality cover is found, the thumbnail is used.
  • In rare instances, where no cover is found, the 📘 Emoji is used as the page icon and no cover is set.
• Book Name is used as the primary key to facilitate upsert operation in Notion database. So, this field should be left untouched. However, the other fields like Title and Author could be modified as per your wish. Additionally, you can also add more fields if you'd like.
• The Highlights field in Notion is currently only set when the page is first made. The number is not updated if additional highlights are appended to the page at a later sync.
• Notes taken for a highlight on your Kindle are displayed in the same style as Readwise: This is an example highlight (Location 100-102) Note: This is an example note

• Every highlight made on Kindle is appended at the end of My Clippings.txt
• This tool only syncs the new highlights made to each book. If no new highlights have been made, no sync takes place.
• The info about the last sync is stored in sync.json present in your repository containing My Clippings.txt.
• In case you wish to sync every book all over again, delete the sync.json file from the repo and delete all the highlights present in your Notion.
• GitHub Action is used for CICD. Whenever a push is made to the master branch, the Docker image is rebuilt and pushed to GitHub container registry.
• Your GitHub repo containing My Clippings.txt runs the GitHub action to sync the highlights to Notion everytime you push a change to it. It can also be triggered manually from the Actions tab.

This repository is a fork of GitHub user @akralim's kindle-to-notion repository. None of my work would be possible without theirs---they did a wonderful job with the application, it is well-maintained, the code is very clean, and the majority of the code in this fork remains the same as theirs. However, I fell in love with the format of the Readwise Notion template. But alas, being a grad student, I didn't want to have to pay for the monthly subscription.

So, I made this fork of kindle-to-notion to be in the same style as the Readwise Notion template. This required using a different starting template, and a surprising amount of code change. So, much of the instructions here are the same as in the original kindle-to-notion repo, with a few updated sections where its relevant.