Kindle Import

Kindle Import

Parse Kindle notebook exports (HTML) and create slipbox entries for user's notes.

Input Format

Kindle exports are XHTML files with this structure:

<div class="bookTitle">Book Title Here</div>
<div class="authors">Author Name</div>
...
<div class="sectionHeading">Chapter/Section Name</div>
<div class="noteHeading">Highlight (yellow) - Section > Page X</div>
<div class="noteText">Highlighted text from book</div>
<div class="noteHeading">Note - Section > Page X</div>
<div class="noteText">User's own note</div>

Key distinction:

• noteHeading starting with "Highlight" → book text → Skip
• noteHeading starting with "Note" → user's own thoughts → Import

Parsing Rules

Metadata Extraction

1. Book title: content of .bookTitle div
2. Author: content of .authors div
3. Source type: book

Content Extraction

1. Find all .noteHeading elements
2. If heading starts with "Note" → get the following .noteText content → import
3. If heading starts with "Highlight" → skip
4. Section info (e.g., "Client-side/Stateless Sessions > Page 28") can be ignored

Workflow

1. Parse file → extract book title and author
2. Extract user notes → collect only Note entries (not Highlights)
3. Precheck → show user: book title, author, note count, ask for confirmation
4. On confirmation → for each note, invoke slipbot:
   • Type: note (- prefix)
   • Source: ~ book, {title} by {author}
   • Let slipbot handle: filename, tags, links, graph update
5. Report → count of notes created

Example

Input file metadata:

• Title: "The JWT Handbook"
• Author: "Sebastian E Peyrott"

Parsed entries:

Highlight (yellow) - Page 28: "This is easily solved by..." → SKIP
Note - Page 28: "Applications should not allow unsigned JWTs..." → IMPORT

Slipbot call:

- Applications should not allow unsigned JWTs to be considered valid. ~ book, The JWT Handbook by Sebastian E Peyrott

Edge Cases

• No user notes (only Highlights): Report "no notes to import"
• Multiple authors: Preserve as-is from the file
• Missing author: Use "Unknown" as author
• Special characters in title/content: Preserve as-is
• HTML entities: Decode before storing (& → &, etc.)

Supported File Types

• .html files exported from Kindle app
• XHTML files (same structure)
• Files sent via Telegram (application/xml or text/plain mime types)