Todoist Actual Backup

Todoist is a SaaS task manager. Todoist provides backups of current tasks, but they do not include completed tasks, subtask relationships, comments or attachments. Nor does it provide a human-readable backup in HTML. This Python script provides a command-line tool to export all available active and completed tasks from the Todoist API to a JSON file, including attachments, subtasks and comments, and generates a human-readable HTML backup.

Features

Exports all active and completed tasks from all projects (active and archived)
Nests tasks under their respective projects, including all available fields
Includes comments for each task
Downloads attachments to output/attachments/ and references them in the JSON and HTML output
JSON and HTML files are named with the current date when the script is run
Maintains Todoist-Completed-History.json so completed tasks older than Todoist's 90-day API window stay in future exports
Reuses archived comments for completed tasks to avoid unnecessary API calls (assumes no new comments after completion)

Setup

Ensure you have Python 3.8 or newer installed. Check with python --version on the command line.

The script uses a .venv for dependencies. Run:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Get your API key from Todoist
Optionally set your Todoist API key in the TODOIST_KEY environment variable. If the environment variable is not set, the script will prompt for it.

Usage

Run source .venv/bin/activate if needed to enter the virtual enivronment.
To see usage instructions, run the script with no arguments or any argument other than export.
Run the script with the export argument:
```
python export_todoist.py export
```
This will create output/Todoist-Actual-Backup-YYYY-MM-DD.json and output/Todoist-Actual-Backup-YYYY-MM-DD.html, and it will update output/attachments/ with any downloaded files while leaving Todoist-Completed-History.json in the project root. Keep Todoist-Completed-History.json somewhere safe (e.g., in source control or a backup location); it is the only way the exporter can retain completions older than Todoist's 90-day API retention window.

Requirements

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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 OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS 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.

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