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).
• Creates Markdown files matching to user-defined templates, see Templates introduced. See How to use templates with YARLE for details.

Prerequisite

• Required Install Node.js version 10.22.1 or higher.

No-install execution

Just open a terminal, specify config options in a config file (options detailed in Configuration) and type the following:

npx -p yarle-evernote-to-md@latest yarle --configFile <path_to_your_file e.g. ./config.json>

Configuration:

To configure Yarle, you must create a config file. By default it looks like this:

{
    "enexSource": "/absolute-path-of-your-enex-dir/test-template.enex",
    "templateFile": "/absolute-path-of-your-template-dir/sampleTemplate.tmpl",
    "outputDir": "out",
    "keepOriginalHtml": false,
    "isMetadataNeeded": false,
    "isNotebookNameNeeded": false,
    "isZettelkastenNeeded": false,
    "plainTextNotesOnly": false,
    "skipLocation": false,
    "skipCreationTime": false,
    "skipUpdateTime": false,
    "skipSourceUrl": false,
    "skipWebClips": false,
    "skipTags": false,
    "useHashTags": true,
    "outputFormat": "StandardMD",
    "skipEnexFileNameFromOutputPath": false
    "monospaceIsCodeBlock": false,
    "keepMDCharactersOfENNotes": false,
}

The following configurational properties are available: |

In program:

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

Release notes

Version 3.4.3

• Changelog:
  1. Fix: replace all image locations in HTML note
  2. Fix: issue when there is only one note-attribute

Version 3.4.2

• Changelog:
  1. Zettelkasten ID is generated in 24h format
  2. html encoded pure url comparison
  3. Use double-bracket notation only for local images
  4. Do not consider mailto: and ftp:// links as internal

Version 3.4.1

• Changelog:
  1. Minor fix around highlight recognition

Version 3.4.0

• Changelog:
  1. Pure urls (no text, or same as the url) are converted to <url>
  2. Note is stored in HTML format as well (see keepOriginalHtml option)
  3. monospace blocks can be recognized as codeblocks (see monospaceIsCodeBlock option)
  4. MD characters are not escaped from now (see keepMDCharactersOfENNotes option)
  5. Creation time set correctly
  6. A bug fixed with self-closing anchor tags (#140)

Version 3.2.3

• Changelog:
  1. Template's path must be specified as absolute path in the config file

Version 3.2.1

• Changelog:
  1. Code blocks are converted to Markdown fenced code blocks
  2. skipEnexFileNameFromOutputPath as config option introduced
  3. source url converted as metadata (see config options)
  4. Case sensitive fileNames
  5. Some bugfixes

Version 3.1.0

• Changelog:
  1. Installation and configuration simplified.

Version 3.0.0

• Changelog:

  1. Templates introduced. See section How to use templates with YARLE
  2. Configuration is read from file instead of command line arguments, see Configuration for details.
  3. Easier usage, yarle as a command, see Usage for details.
  4. Name of notebook is added as configuratble metadata option to be embedded into the note
  5. Inclusion of web-clips is a configurable option

• No more broken:

  1. Mayor set of fixes around internal links, check this umbrella-issue about the changes.
  2. Codeblock issue

Version 2.11.0

• Features:

  1. Webclipped notes, namely articles, simplified articles, bookmarks, screenshots scraped by Evernote's web clipper are converted
  2. UrlEncodeMD introduced as possible value of 'outputFormat' property, it makes image links be url-encoded in markdown notes, thx to Martin Hähnel
  3. Links in headers supported

• Fixes:

  1. Memory leak issue
  2. List items indented correctly, thx to Martin Hähnel
  3. Bug of multiple links point to the same resource fixed
  4. Required node version clarification, thx to Mesc

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 )