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Emma Goto 🍙
Emma Goto 🍙

Posted on • Originally published at emgoto.com on

How to export from Ulysses to Markdown

#ulysses #markdown #automation

I use the Ulysses text editor to write all my posts. Converting them into Markdown files for my blog isn’t as easy as copy-pasting, especially when things like frontmatter and images are involved.

So here's the script I use to convert Ulysses files to Markdown.

  1. Right click a sheet in Ulysses and choose the Quick Export option. Choose the Textbundle format.
  2. Save the Textbundle folder to your desired location. I save it inside the scripts folder of my repository.
  3. Then run the following script to convert the Ulysses file to Markdown. 
#!/usr/bin/env node  const { renameSync, unlink, rmdir } = require('fs'); const { join } = require('path'); const glob = require('glob'); const replace = require('replace-in-file'); const toFrontMatter = (title) => `--- title: "${title}" date: ${new Date().toISOString().substring(0, 10)} tags: [] ---`; const ulysses = async () => { const file = glob.sync( join(process.cwd(), 'scripts', '**', '*.textbundle'), )[0]; // Moves the .textbundle file to the /posts directory const slug = file.match(/\/([^\/]+).textbundle/)[1]; const postsDirectory = join(process.cwd(), 'posts'); let newFolder = `${postsDirectory}/${slug}`; renameSync(file, newFolder); // Move images out of assets folder const images = glob.sync(join(newFolder, 'assets', '*')); images.forEach((image) => { let imageName = image.match(/assets\/([^\/]+)/)[1]; const newFolder = `${postsDirectory}/${slug}`; renameSync(image, `${newFolder}/${imageName}`); }); // Remove redundant folder and files rmdir(`${newFolder}/assets`, () => {}); unlink(`${newFolder}/info.json`, () => {}); // Formats into frontmatter structure const headerRegex = /^# .*/g; const markdownPngRegex = /!\[.*\]\(assets.*png\)/g; const headerFn = (title) => toFrontMatter(title.replace('# ', '').trim()); const markdownPngFn = (line) => line.replace(/\(assets/, '(.'); const options = { files: `${newFolder}/index.mdx`, from: [headerRegex, markdownPngRegex], to: [headerFn, markdownPngFn], }; return replace(options); }; ulysess();
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You can run the script directly with:

node ./scripts/ulysses.js
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Or you can add the script to your package.json file:

"scripts": { "uly": "./scripts/ulysses.js", },
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And then run it with yarn uly.

How the Ulysses to Markdown script works

Exporting a Ulysses file as a Textbundle saves it with the following file structure:

scripts ulysses-to-markdown.textbundle info.json text.md assets image.png
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The script will rearrange it to look like this:

posts ulysses-to-markdown text.md image.png
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The original Markdown file, directly from Ulysses, will look like this:

# How to export from Ulysses to Markdown Here's the content of the post. ![](assets/image.png)
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And the script will convert it into this format:

--- title: "How to export from Ulysses to Markdown" date: 2021-09-25 tags: [] --- Here's the content of the post. ![](./image.png)
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