metalsmith-dayone

A Metalsmith plugin to create files from a Day One JSON export.

This plugin only works with Day One v2.

Getting your Day One data

Learn how to export your data as JSON from Day One. Don't worry too much about filtering in Day One, since this plugin allows you to filter which journals and entries get built.

After you have the .zip file, here are the steps to make sure metalsmith can work with it:

1. Extract the .zip file
2. If it extracts to a directory, you're all good to go
3. If it just extracted to a .json file, put that file inside a directory

Example

See the metalsmith-dayone-example repo for an example with paginated entries and tags pages.

Usage

Hopefully Super Basic Usage

Once you have all your exported Day One data in a directory, just point the source method at that directory.

This will result in the destination directory having an html file for each entry! It will also copy any referenced photos to that directory.

require('metalsmith')(__dirname)
  .source('./path/to/dayone/data')
  .destination('./build')
  .clean(true)
  .use(require('metalsmith-dayone')())
  .build((err) => {
    if (err) throw err
  })

Adding Day One data to an existing site

If you already have a metalsmith site or want to use Day One data in conjunction with other stuff, you probably don't want to change the source path. In this case, you can provide a data option to metalsmith-dayone to tell it where to look for your data.

require('metalsmith')(__dirname)
  .source('./you/already/got/src')
  .destination('./build')
  .use(require('metalsmith-dayone')({
    data: './path/to/dayone/data'
  }))
  .build()

Can't you just work with the zip file?

metalsmith-dayone can unzip the .zip file for you, but it requires that the source directory exists. If all you want is Day One data with metalsmith you'll need to point source at an empty directory.

// Create an empty directory first
require('mkdirp').sync(__dirname + '/empty')

require('metalsmith')(__dirname)
  .source('./empty')
  .destination('./build')
  .use(require('metalsmith-dayone')({
    data: './path/to/dayone.zip'
  }))
  .build()

Filtering Day One data

metalsmith-dayone can filter which journals and entries get built by passing options to the plugin.

Let's say you have a journal called Exercise with a ton of entries but you only want to build a site with entries tagged run or bike. Here's how you'd do that:

require('metalsmith')(__dirname)
  .source('./path/to/dayone/data')
  .destination('./build')
  .clean(true)
  .use(require('metalsmith-dayone')({
    // Either option can be strings or arrays of strings
    // They will also do a case insensitive match
    journals: 'exercise',
    tags: ['run', 'bike']
  }))
  .build()

What does this plugin do?

Day One captures a lot of data. From weather.windSpeedKPH to userActivity.stepCount, well there's a bunch. For this reason, this plugin doesn't do much data parsing except the following:

1. Transforms the text to a buffer (and optionally parses it to html) and puts it on contents
2. Rewrites any internal Day One links and images to point where they will be in the destination directory
3. Adds title metadata based on the best guess from the entry
4. Places all other Day One data as if it were read from frontmatter

Here's an example of some data after metalsmith-dayone is done with it (with a path of entries/:id):

{
  'entries/BC5CE1B78AFC4003A1BB0CF5593013C5.html': {
    contents: Buffer,
    text: '# Raw markdown\nStuff',
    title: 'Raw markdown',
    tags: ['tag', 'tag3'],
    weather: { ... },
    location: { ... },
    ...
  },
  'photos/123.jpeg': {
    contents: Buffer
  },
  'entries/E686072CCEE044948295B7C4CF5D1C42.html': {
    contents: Buffer,
    text: '![](/photos/123.jpeg)',
    title: 'Untitled', // No title for this entry
    tags: ['tag1', 'tag3'],
    photos: [{ ... }],
    ...
  }
}

Full API

data (optional)

String

Path to your exported Day One data directory or .zip file.

If this is not used, it will default to the metalsmith.source directory.

path (optional, default: entries/:id.html)

String

The path where each entry will be written. :id will be replaced by the Day One entry id.

layout (optional, default null)

String

Specifiy a layout property to be used with each entry. Used for compatibility with metalsmith-layouts.

markdown (optional, default true)

Boolean

Whether to parse the text of each entry from markdown to html. Based on this property the extension of each file will be .html or .md.

journals (optional, default null)

String | [String, ...]

Filter which journals get built by doing a case insensitive match on the name of the journal.

By default all journals get built.

tags (optional, default null)

String | [String, ...]

Filter which entries get built by doing a case insensitive match on the entries' tags.

By default all entries get built.

Known Issues

• I've had one journal where the exported data is always missing a few images even though they are visible inside Day One

LICENSE

MIT