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I'm definitely planning on adding import/export into a future version, particularly from existing desktop apps like MasterCook and MacGourmet, but also from a p

I'm definitely planning on adding import/export into a future version, particularly from existing desktop apps like MasterCook and MacGourmet, but also from a plain text format. The trick with the plain text format is making sure the recipes are consistently formatted so I can pick them up and differentiate the relevant sections.

dunham 16y ago
FWIW, I use a simple format inspired by stuff like markdown. A Mail-like header for metadata, followed by optional headnotes, ingredients prefixed with "- ", and finally instructions. Example (hope this comes through ok): Title: Recipe Title Here Alternate: Alternate title here Category: Entree Flickr: 1234, 3204, 29384 Author: A U Thor Image: foo.jpg Some optional headnotes. Usually one paragraph. Additional paragraphs separated by newline. * Ingredient Heading - ingredients start with a dash - 1 cup milk - 1/2 small onion, chopped * Maybe another ingredient heading - 1 tsp another ingredient Instructions follow the ingredients, with blank lines separating the paragraphs. More instructions. I'm currently using these text files and a bunch of home-grown software. I started out with YummySoup, exporting to this text format by hitting their CoreData database with a little python app. (You need the .mom file in the app bundle to pull this off.) For my stuff, I got to define the format, so it's pretty simple to deal with. Stuff like mealmaster seems to vary widely in practice and is tricky to parse. I also allow headings in the instructions, too, so I do have to peek ahead to see if a starred line precedes an ingredient line or not.
- stevenwei 16y ago
  That's a fairly simple and straightforward format, thanks for sharing it. My main worry is that people will have recipes saved in all sorts of random formats, and won't understand why the importer doesn't work when they try it on their files, and won't want to reformat them. Not sure if I can think of a clever workaround for that, though...

dunham 16y ago

FWIW, I use a simple format inspired by stuff like markdown. A Mail-like header for metadata, followed by optional headnotes, ingredients prefixed with "- ", and finally instructions. Example (hope this comes through ok): Title: Recipe Title Here Alternate: Alternate title here Category: Entree Flickr: 1234, 3204, 29384 Author: A U Thor Image: foo.jpg Some optional headnotes. Usually one paragraph. Additional paragraphs separated by newline. * Ingredient Heading - ingredients start with a dash - 1 cup milk - 1/2 small onion, chopped * Maybe another ingredient heading - 1 tsp another ingredient Instructions follow the ingredients, with blank lines separating the paragraphs. More instructions. I'm currently using these text files and a bunch of home-grown software. I started out with YummySoup, exporting to this text format by hitting their CoreData database with a little python app. (You need the .mom file in the app bundle to pull this off.) For my stuff, I got to define the format, so it's pretty simple to deal with. Stuff like mealmaster seems to vary widely in practice and is tricky to parse. I also allow headings in the instructions, too, so I do have to peek ahead to see if a starred line precedes an ingredient line or not.

stevenwei 16y ago
That's a fairly simple and straightforward format, thanks for sharing it. My main worry is that people will have recipes saved in all sorts of random formats, and won't understand why the importer doesn't work when they try it on their files, and won't want to reformat them. Not sure if I can think of a clever workaround for that, though...