Exporting all notes does not preserved any change "Created At" metadata

Jishenaz · October 18, 2021, 2:07am

Bug report

When exporting all notes from Inkdrop, the contents of the markdown files are fine, but the metadata for the creation date will be incorrect for some exported notes.

Inkdrop has a feature to modify the creation date of a note (by changing the “Created At” metadata). So when Inkdrop exports all notes to markdown, I would expect that this changed creation date would propagate to the exports, but that’s not the case. The reason I change the creation dates of some notes is because I sometimes manually import old notes into Inkdrop that were created before I started using Inkdrop.

I suspect the export feature is using the creation date of the Inkdrop note before changing the “Created At” metadata. Having the “Export → All Notes” feature propagate all the changed creation dates would be very helpful for backup and archiving purposes. Appreciate your time.

Info

Platform: macOS
Platform version: Catalina
App Version: 5.4.3

Reproduce

Open Inkdrop (presuming there are notes in there)
Pick a random note and modify the “Created At” metadata to “2000-01-01 00:00:00” (which is clearly a date when Inkdrop didn’t exist yet)
Go to “File → Export → All Notes…”
Select an empty folder to export all the notes
Open the folder in your file browser where you just exported all the notes
Find the markdown file of the note whose “Created At” metadata you changed
Read the file’s metadata using the file browser (you may have to adjust your file browser’s view settings to be able to see this)

Expected: The creation date of that markdown file should be something like “Jan 1, 2000”
Actual: The creation date of that markdown file is much more recent, most likely the date when that note was created in Inkdrop before modifying the “Created At” date.

craftzdog · October 18, 2021, 6:51am

Hi Jibran,

Thank you for the report.
Inkdrop touches the exported files with updatedAt metadata as you can see in the source code:

github.com

inkdropapp/inkdrop-export-as-markdown/blob/master/lib/exporter.js#L150


      .split('T')[0]
      .replace(/-/g, '')
    fileName =
      fileName ||
      sanitize(datestr + '-' + note.title + '-' + note._id.substr(5)) + '.md'
    const filePath = path.join(pathToSave, fileName)
    let body = addTitleToMarkdown(note.body, note.title)
    body = await replaceImages(body, pathToSave, pathToSave)
    fs.writeFileSync(filePath, body)
    touch.sync(filePath, { time: new Date(note.updatedAt) })
  }
}
function findNoteFromTree(bookId, tree) {
  for (let i = 0; i < tree.length; ++i) {
    const item = tree[i]
    if (item._id === bookId) {
      return item
    } else if (item.children) {
      const book = findNoteFromTree(bookId, item.children)

That changes both their “created date” and “last modified date”.
Unfortunately, NodeJS doesn’t support setting different values for each “created date” and “modified date”:

https://nodejs.org/api/fs.html#fs_fs_utimes_path_atime_mtime_callback

So, can you please use “Updated At” metadata instead?

Jishenaz · October 18, 2021, 8:14pm

Hi Takuya san,

I appreciate the quick response. Having read your explanation, I now understand the limitation that are unfortunately present in NodeJS’s ability to change certain file metadata.

Since I give more importance to the “Created At” metadata over “Updated At”, I don’t mind using the latter to indicate when a note was actually created, for the purposes of exporting. Thanks again

craftzdog · October 19, 2021, 5:31am

Thanks for your understanding!