hugo-clemente / notion-backup

A simple GitHub repository template you can use to automate Notion backups using GitHub actions.

Notion Backup

A simple GitHub repository template you can use to automate Notion backups using GitHub actions. The backups are stored on the repo, so you can keep track of them.

Acknowledgements

Huge thanks to Artur Burtsev ! They're the author of the script used for the backup, and they wrote this article which is the main source of "inspiration" for this repo.

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How to use

Simply click the use this template button on GitHub to create your own repo. Next, you need to configure the secrets to get the backup script working.

Configuring the secrets

Two things are needed : a notion access token, and a notion space ID.

Here's how to get them in Google Chrome:

• Open http://notion.so/, go to “Settings & Members” → “Settings”
• Open Chrome DevTools by pressing Command+Option+J (Mac) or Control+Shift+J (Windows, Linux, Chrome OS)
• Go to the Network tab, as shown on a screenshot below
• Enable “XHR” filter (1), clear console (2), start the export (3), select “enqueueTask” (4)

In the opened “Headers” tab you would need to scroll down until you see “cookie:” and a lot of text, in this text you need to identify a part, which looks like (5): token_v2=xxx; where xxx is a very long sequence of letters and digits and can span multiple lines.
Copy everything between “token_v2=” and “;” and add it as a GitHub actions secret under the name NOTION_TOKEN_V2 (How to add a secret to GitHub actions).

Now scroll to the very bottom and under the “Request Payload” section you will see something like (6): spaceId: “4489c123-09d6-4069-ae3b-1665e25d6c03”
Copy the value inside quotes, and again add it as a GitHub actions secret under the name NOTION_SPACE_ID.

Enabling actions

⚠️ THIS STEP IS VERY IMPORTANT, THE BACKUP WON'T WORK IF YOU DON'T DO THIS ⚠️

To enable the backup action, you simply need to go to the actions tab, and click Enable actions on this repository

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You should be good to go !

The script will run everyday at 8PM UTC (configurable), and add the notion export to a backup folder in your repo.

Configure the cron task

The script is run on a cron schedule. You can modify the schedule in the .github/workflows/backup.yml file. Look for - cron: '0 20 * * *', and change the cron schedule as desired (use this great tool)

https://artur-en.medium.com/automated-notion-backups-f6af4edc298d

notion-backup's Issues

403 error when trying to download the backup file

Seems like it's not working anymore, when the script tries to download the backup file, it returns 403 error. Any ideas how to fix that?

Cannot make a backup when path is too long

urllib.error.HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden

I did get an error urllib.error.HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden. What to do? I deleted the filename and replaced it with the text in-between the <>

Pages exported: 3601
Pages exported: 3601
Pages exported: 3603
Export created, downloading: https://file.notion.so/f/t/<filename-which-contained-my-data>.zip
    with contextlib.closing(urlopen(url, data)) as fp:
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/hostedtoolcache/Python/3.12.1/x64/lib/python3.12/urllib/request.py", line 215, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/hostedtoolcache/Python/3.12.1/x64/lib/python3.12/urllib/request.py", line 521, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/hostedtoolcache/Python/3.12.1/x64/lib/python3.12/urllib/request.py", line 630, in http_response
    response = self.parent.error(
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/hostedtoolcache/Python/3.12.1/x64/lib/python3.12/urllib/request.py", line 559, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/hostedtoolcache/Python/3.12.1/x64/lib/python3.12/urllib/request.py", line 492, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/hostedtoolcache/Python/3.12.1/x64/lib/python3.12/urllib/request.py", line 639, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.full_url, code, msg, hdrs, fp)
urllib.error.HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden