Motivation

The provided tool provides a scriptable method for downloading all your Kindle notes as JSON for automated backup, statistics, export to other services, etc. Note that no official API exists, so the information returned is limited to what's available on the "Your Highlights" link reachable from the Kindle homepage.

Installation & Use

1. Install Easy Install
2. Run easy_install mechanize
3. Create a JSON credentials file of the form: { "email": "[email protected]", "password": "pass123" }
4. Restrict permissions of the creds file if you like
5. Run extract_kindle_notes.py -c creds.json -o output.json

Full Usage:

Usage: scrape_kindle_highlights.py [options]

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o FILE, --output=FILE
                        filepath to write JSON output to
  -s TYPE, --note-sort=TYPE
                        sort notes within book by: recency, location [default:
                        recency]
  -c FILE, --cred-file=FILE
                        path to JSON file containing Amazon login credentials
                        in the form { email : <email>, password : <password> }
  -e ENCODING, --encoding=ENCODING
                        sets encoding to use when dumping JSON (commonly
                        'utf-8' or 'unicode-escape') [default: utf-8]
  -i JSON_INDENT, --indent-level=JSON_INDENT
                        number of indentation spaces to use when formatting
                        JSON output [default: 4]
  -d, --disable-key-sorting
                        disables sorting of keys in JSON output

Todo

• Refactor into something that's not one enormous file
• Use the pseudo-API method from this scraper that I just discovered :(