• Introduction
• Features
• Before Start
  • Export data from Day One
  • Check Integrity
    • Special Cases for Photo Extension Name
    • Audio Extension Name
• Usage
• Known Issues
• TODO

Introduction

A command line tool that can convert Day One data into markdown files.

Features

Following metadata are supported:

• Creation Date
• Modification Date
• Device Model
• Operating System
• Day One UUID
• Time Zone
• Starred
• All Day
• Pinned
• Device
• Hashtags
• Activity
• Walking Steps

Example preview:

These are implemented through css and html tags, so are not able to be previewed on GitHub.

Audios and videos are also supported. Some markdown editor might not be able to preview badges, audios, and videos. In this case, converting to HTML is recommended. As long as the browser supports and tags, those media would be rendered.

Before Start

Export data from Day One

The first step is to export data from Day One.

Goto Settings -> Import/Export -> Export Day One JSON (.zip) and you should click on include media files.

Wait for couple of seconds (hours, I hate the iCloud service in mainland China), and you would get a zip file.

Check Integrity

Note that, the data you dumped might be damaged, and some files may be missing. To continue, it is recommended to use the tool provided to check data integrity.

$ python3 .\resource_checker.py check --help     
Usage: resource_checker.py check [OPTIONS] DIRECTORY

  Check data integrity. Only photos, audios, and videos are supported.

  ARGUMENTS:

  * DIRECTORY: path of unzipped Day One data

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

If some files are missing, don't worry. The tool will tell you the md5 hash of the file, and you can search through the JSON data and find in which entry the data is located. For example, if you've found ad7f659d748c1a41c753907c6946eb03 is located in the following data,

{
	"creationDate" : "2020-10-01T13:21:01Z",
	"photos" : [
		{
		"orderInEntry" : 5,
		"md5" : "ad7f659d748c1a41c753907c6946eb03",
		// ...
		}, 
		// ...
	],
	// ...
}

It implies that the file you are looking for is a photo, and is located in the 2020-10-01 entry, and is the (5 + 1) th asset in the entry.

Now the only thing to do is to find out the photo, and rename it to its md5 hash value and then copy it to the ./photo folder.

Special Cases for Photo Extension Name

Note that in some circumstances, the extension name of the image you found is different from the type field in the image json. Feel free to change the dumped data. The checker program will calculate the md5 value for each file indexed, and will inform you if anything is going wrong.

e.g. If the image you found have the png extension, and the json data looks like the following:

"photos" : [
	{
	"orderInEntry" : 5,
	"md5" : "ad7f659d748c1a41c753907c6946eb03",
	"type": "jpeg", // feel free to change to "png"
	// ...
	}, 
	// ...
],

Audio Extension Name

Most audios have m4a as extension name. However, the dumped json data might have aac as the value of format field:

"audios" : [
	{
		"fileSize" : 372838,
		"orderInEntry" : 4,
		"duration" : 55.68,
		"favorite" : false,
		"format" : "aac", // Here it is
		"md5" : "3c93e9d7389628f6b364e1b2029cd046",
		// ...
	}
]

Feel free to change it into m4a. The only rule is that you should keep the extension name of audio files and format field value the same.

Usage

$ python3 .\converter.py convert --help
Usage: converter.py convert [OPTIONS] DIRECTORY

  Convert dumped data to markdown files        

  ARGUMENTS:

  * DIRECTORY: path of unzipped Day One data   

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

The converted files are located in the ./markdown folder relative to Day One data folder.

Known Issues

Following formats are not supported, 'cause I am not subscribing the app any more. If any one is interested in supporting those formats, feel free to send me dumped data, and I will take a look on them.

• Sketch
• File
• Scan
• Template

Some text attributes cannot be retained, for example red text, because they are not exported explicitly in dumped data, neither in text field, nor in richText field.

TODO

• Location
• Weather