An issue I ran into when exporting my Signal chats was with the fix_names function. Currently, it just deletes all non-alphanumeric characters in each chat name, which can lead to a couple of errors:
1. Chats with names comprising solely from non-alphanumeric characters get renamed to empty strings
For example, if there is a chat with name like
,
it will get rewritten to an empty string and hence the directory with the exported chat history will be in the main directory of all other chat histories
(the media folder of that chat is also in the main export directory).
2. No duplicate chat name handling
I think there can be a case of two chats having the same name, and these should then be handled separately and not merged. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but in my case when I run the script with the --verbose flag, the log shows that I have two chats/contacts with the same name yet different profileName (one being None):
(I have modified the if log branch print statement to show profileName as well, i.e. appended , aka {result[4]} to the print statement).
Then in the final output, these get merged into a single chat. In my case one of these chats is empty, so that is not a problem, but I think this could lead into some data loss if there are actually two different non-empty chats with same name.
I just tried fixing these in the accompanying PR, let me know what you think and, of course, request changes where required 😊.
carderne
commented
2 years ago
Hi, and thanks for this awesome repo!
An issue I ran into when exporting my Signal chats was with the
fix_namesfunction. Currently, it just deletes all non-alphanumeric characters in each chat name, which can lead to a couple of errors:1. Chats with names comprising solely from non-alphanumeric characters get renamed to empty strings For example, if there is a chat with name like
,
it will get rewritten to an empty string and hence the directory with the exported chat history will be in the main directory of all other chat histories
(the
mediafolder of that chat is also in the main export directory).2. No duplicate chat name handling I think there can be a case of two chats having the same name, and these should then be handled separately and not merged. I'm not sure if this is relevant, but in my case when I run the script with the
(I have modified the
--verboseflag, the log shows that I have two chats/contacts with the samenameyet differentprofileName(one beingNone):if logbranch print statement to showprofileNameas well, i.e. appended, aka {result[4]}to the print statement). Then in the final output, these get merged into a single chat. In my case one of these chats is empty, so that is not a problem, but I think this could lead into some data loss if there are actually two different non-empty chats with same name.I just tried fixing these in the accompanying PR, let me know what you think and, of course, request changes where required 😊.
Thanks once again!