mekk.rtmimport 0.1.3

Import foreign (at the moment, Nozbe) data to RememberTheMilk

Note: this module has been phased out in favor of mekk.rtm. You can use it to import Nozbe export but all future development will take place in mekk.rtm (and Nozbe import is also present there).

See mekk.rtm documentation.

mekk.rtmimport handles importing data to RememberTheMilk. At the moment it handles importing data exported from Nozbe, I keep more generic name in case I write other importers in the future.

Prerequisities

mekk.rtmimport uses RtmAPI wrapper library. I had to patch it a bit and 0.3.2 is likely to fail. I hope to have my patches accepted but until newer version is released, one must use my RtmAPI fork (use get source link to download .zip file, unpack it, install by python setup.py install).

From Nozbe to RememberTheMilk

Exporting the data from Nozbe

Prepare .json export of Nozbe data. For details see mekk.nozbe but usually you just want to:

nozbetool export --user=MyNozbeName --json=mynozbedata.json

Importing data to RememberTheMilk

First make a test run:

rtmimport --nozbe-json=mynozbedata.json --verbose --dry-run

(it does not store anything, just prints what it is to do) and verify whether everything seems correct.

Then make actual import:

rtmimport --nozbe-json=mynozbedata.json --verbose

(or omit –verbose if you don’t want to track progress, but I recommend you keep it)

Note: import can take some time. In case of my big list over not-so-good network it has been running for almost an hour.

How the data is converted

Nozbe projects are saved as RememberTheMilk lists.

Nozbe contexts are converted to RememberTheMilk tags. @ is prepended to their names and non-alphanumeric characters are replaced with dashes (so for example My home/kitchen becomes @My-home-kitchen).

Next actions are tagged as Next.

Actions are saved as tasks. Name, due date, recurrence, estimated cost and completion status are all saved.

In case of recurrence, RTM every mode is used (so the task marked on Nozbe as recurring every week will be spawned 52 times a year by RTM, whether user completes it, or not). If you prefer alternative way (spawning new incarnation whenever previous is completed), edit tasks after import, patch the code (and replace every with after), or ask me for a commandline flag).

As notes are bound to projects on Nozbe, and to tasks on RememberTheMilk, I save notes by creating artificial tasks named “Save this note” (one per every list for which appropriate project had notes) and binding notes to those tasks. This must be handled afterwards using RTM interface, to make sure it happens I mark those tasks as due immediately. Those task are also tagged as Note.

Limitations

Only main context is copied, additional contexts are lost. I don’t know how to grab them from Nozbe (in case somebody knows how to patch mekk.nozbe to grab all contexts, I can extend this importer easily to handle them all).

Uploads are not copied at all. I neither now how to export them from Nozbe, nor how could I handle them afterwards (RTM has no uploads).

Action name formatting is not available on RememberTheMilk, so if you used constructs like Visit “the website”:http://google.com, they will show up as is.

Sharing information (= information about delegations to other users) is lost. I haven’t used this feature so I don’t know how do the underlying data look like.

Some contexts could probably be converted to locations, not tags, but I don’t have an idea how to decide which way to go.

Problems and workarounds

If import process is interrupted, re-running it would make duplicate tasks (there is no duplicate checking, it would be costly). The best way to resolve it is to open .json file in text editor (after making a backup copy of it) and simply cut all actions which are already saved (they are saved in order, so it is just a matter of locating the last action saved before the process was interrupted and cutting all actions up to this one).

Source, bugs, patches

Development is tracked on BitBucket.