[[roam-backup]]

Automate backing up JSON copies of your Roam Research data, using GitHub Actions and AWS S3.

Backups will be generated using Puppeteer and saved into the backups folder (config.backupFolder, can be changed) of an S3 bucket of your choice.

Usage

You can get roam-backup up and running in just a few minutes! The best part is that you don't need to deploy anything!

Just follow these steps and you'll be on your way:

1. Fork this repository.
2. Enable Actions on the repository, as they get disabled upon forking.
3. Setup an AWS S3 bucket to store your Roam backups:

• Ensure you create the AWS S3 bucket manually –– this script will not create the bucket. Note the awsBucketName for step #4.
• Create (or reuse) a user in the AWS console, and ensure it has permissions to upload to an S3 bucket (the S3FullAccess policy will guarantee it, but you can use a more conservative policy that simply enables upload). Note the awsAccessKeyId and awsAccessKeySecret of the user for step #4.

4. In your Github repository's Settings, go to the Secrets section and add the following secrets (naming must match exactly!):

• roamEmail
• roamPassword
• awsBucketName
• awsAccessKeyId
• awsAccessKeySecret

Don't worry! Your Roam and AWS credentials will be secure. GitHub Secrets are encrypted, and provide a convenient methodology for storing secure data in repositories.

5. Make a commit. It can be any commit, but this will start the process and trigger workflows.

Congrats! 🎉 You've successfully automated the backup of your brain 🧠. Now go write about it in today's Daily Note!

NOTE: This is still fairly WIP, and this is my first project using Puppeteer, so it may be a little buggy.

Development

Running this project locally should be possible using .env - copy .env.example to .env and fill it in with your own authentication keys.

The project generates an error.png screenshot to capture the current page if something goes wrong, as well as ZIP folders, which are the JSON backups. Running npm start will clear any local screenshots and backups, and run the script as it would in the GitHub Actions workflow (npm start)