neolateral - Import Substack Newsletter/Blog Posts into Pelican Posts Folder

A few weeks ago I started writing a newsletter at substack.com (which is an excellent platform btw, and I'm loving it). My newsletter is called ArtNoob. Now, substack allows you to export of all the posts on a newsletter, which is a very handy way to grab all the posts and host it on another site. And that's exactly what I wanted to do.

This is a static website https://abhishekmishra.in generated using Pelican. So all I wanted to do was to grab the exported posts and convert them into pelican post format, and regenerate my website.

To grab the posts from your newsletter, go to https://.substack.com/publish/settings and scroll all the way down to the section which says - "Export your data".

The section looks something like this

Once you've requested the data, substack will send you an email when data is available, and then you can go back to the same page and section and download the zip file.

Extract Data Export

Once you've downloaded the data export zip file, extract it somewhere on disk. Note down the folder because you will need it in the next step.

Edit and Run the import script

I've written the script which processes the exported posts and creates pelican articles with the same content, and import frontmatter metadata added.

Here's the script which includes comments to help you change the paths to point to your newsletter posts folder.

	#!/usr/bin/env python3

	# UNLICENSE
	#
	# This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.

	# Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or
	# distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled
	# binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any
	# means.

	# In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors
	# of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the
	# software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit
	# of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and
	# successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of
	# relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this
	# software under copyright law.

	# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
	# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
	# MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
	# IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR
	# OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE,
	# ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
	# OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

	# For more information, please refer to <http://unlicense.org/>

	## Author: Abhishek Mishra <[email protected]>
	## Date: 29th Dec 2021
	##
	## Program to process newsletter export downloaded from substack
	## and import them as markdown files in pelican content folder.
	## It should also work with other static-site generators.
	##
	## Download the exported posts zip from substack, and unzip on
	## folder on disk.
	##
	## For the purposes of this script, I extracted the posts zip
	## file at ./ext_work/<newsletter>_import/.
	## If this folder is different for you, change the definition
	## of NEWSLETTER_IMPORT_DIR

	import csv
	import os
	from pathlib import Path

	# REVIEW AND EDIT THESE CONSTANTS

	# Change this to your newsletter name
	# the newsletter part from https://<newsletter>.substack.com
	# in your newsletter's url
	NEWSLETTER_NAME = "artnoob"

	# Create the paths to the exported posts folder and target folder
	HOMEPAGE_PROJ_DIR = "."

	# The folder where the substack export is extracted
	NEWSLETTER_IMPORT_DIR = os.path.join(
	HOMEPAGE_PROJ_DIR, "ext_work/{}_import".format(NEWSLETTER_NAME)
	)
	NEWSLETTER_POSTS_CSV = os.path.join(NEWSLETTER_IMPORT_DIR, "posts.csv")

	# The folder where the pelican posts need to be written
	NEWSLETTER_POSTS_TARGET_DIR = os.path.join(
	HOMEPAGE_PROJ_DIR, "content/posts/{}".format(NEWSLETTER_NAME)
	)

	# This list will hold the post data loaded from the posts.csv file
	substack_posts = []

	# Read the posts.csv file and filter out any non-published posts
	with open(NEWSLETTER_POSTS_CSV, newline="", encoding='utf-8') as csvfile:
	postsreader = csv.reader(csvfile)
	headers = None
	for row in postsreader:
	if headers == None:
	headers = row
	else:
	post_item = {}
	for idx, col in enumerate(row):
	post_item[headers[idx]] = col
	substack_posts.append(post_item)
	substack_posts = list(
	item for item in substack_posts if item["is_published"] == "true"
	)
	for v in substack_posts:
	v["post_html"] = os.path.join(
	NEWSLETTER_IMPORT_DIR, "posts", v["post_id"] + ".html"
	)
	print("Found {} published posts".format(len(substack_posts)))

	# Process the loaded posts metadata
	# Create exact path to the target post file.
	# If the target post does not exist,
	# create a new markdown file with frontmatter
	# loaded from posts csv, and content from the html file
	for post in substack_posts:
	src_path = Path(post["post_html"])
	target_path = Path(NEWSLETTER_POSTS_TARGET_DIR, src_path.name)
	target_path = target_path.with_suffix(".md")

	# print(src_path, target_path)
	if not os.path.exists(target_path):
	with open(target_path, "w", encoding="utf8") as outf:
	outf.write("---\n")
	for key, val in post.items():
	outf.write("{}: {}\n".format(key, val))
	if key == "post_date":
	outf.write("{}: {}\n".format("date", val))
	outf.write("---\n\n")
	with open(src_path, "r", encoding="utf8") as inf:
	outf.write(inf.read())
	print("wrote {}".format(target_path))
	else:
	print("WARN: {} already exists. Will not overwrite!".format(target_path))

view raw substack_posts_import.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

If you need any help running the code, let me know by adding a comment to the gist.

Happy blogging! Abhishek

Getting Substack Newsletter Posts into a Pelican Site

Grab the Substack Newsletter Posts

Extract Data Export

Edit and Run the import script