export-kobo-to-notion

A Node script that exports Kobo highlights to a Notion database. I wrote a detailed writeup of how I wrote this code on my blog.

Prerequisites

You'll need Git and Node installed on your computer.

You'll also need to configure a Notion "integration" that has access to the database you wish to use (your "library" database). Notion has instructions on how to set up an integration here, and you can give it access to your library database by sharing the database with the integration.

How to use this script

1. In your terminal, clone this repository by running the following command:

   git clone https://github.com/juliariec/export-kobo-to-notion.git
   

2. Navigate inside the folder and run npm install to install the necessary modules.

3. Create a file called .env. Inside the file, you'll need to set two variables:

   1. NOTION_TOKEN, which is the internal integration token associated with your Notion integration. You can find this here, and it will look like secret_TY78iopwv (but longer).
   2. NOTION_DATABASE_ID, which is the ID of the library database. You can find this in the URL of the database page: the URL will have a 32 digit ID located between your workspace name and the ? symbol: it will look like https://www.notion.so/username/776yv4nanf6qx0bdttznd9upfljupb11?v=s9..., where the ID is 776yv4nanf6qx0bdttznd9upfljupb11

   So your .env file will look like this:

   NOTION_TOKEN=secret_TY78iopwv
   NOTION_DATABASE_ID=776yv4nanf6qx0bdttznd9upfljupb11
   

4. Connect your Kobo to your computer and open it in File Explorer. Navigate into the .kobo directory and copy the file called KoboReader.sqlite, and then paste it into the export-kobo-to-notion folder and rename it highlights.sqlite.

5. Go to your Notion library database and make sure that the database contains a "Title" property with the name of the book, and a "Highlights" checkbox property which defaults to unchecked. (The script will match books based on the title, and then see if highlights have already been uploaded: if not, it will upload them, and then set the "Highlights" box to checked).

6. Run the script with the command npm start, and then check your Notion database to confirm that it worked.