CLI tool for exporting encrypted messages from a room or direct message.

Running

To run the program, use Nix:

$ nix run

This lets you try the program once or twice without installing to $PATH.

To build, use:

$ nix build

The output will be placed in ./result/.

See the website to install, and the wiki to enable flakes (required!).

Current features

Cross-signing support

Verification using emoji combinations, should allow downloading from rooms with "Only send messages to verified users" turned on. Room key files alone also might not have everything one needs (See #5 for details).

Interactive prompts

Done using promkit.

Config file

For loading a preset, create ./met-config.toml. An example is listed in met-config.toml. Env vars with the prefix MET_ can also be used, overriding the config. Example: MET_USERID.

Multiple room exports

The selection prompt allows for more than one room. The downloads are concurrent.

Caching export data

This is especially useful for larger exports, for example with 100k events. The program creates met-cache.json on 10,000 messages downloaded. This file contains:

• Room ID
• Last message token used
• Room display name

The message token can be resumed from. Note that this is not the event ID. Every time the cache is updated, the last 10,000 messages/events get written too.

That means if you download 29k events and exit, only 20k are exported, but guarantees consistency when resuming later.

Performance

After adding mpsc::channel for downloading and writing, I tested this on a room with >750k messages. 200k events were downloaded in 10 minutes over a laggy connection 1000 km away from the homeserver.

This first downloads 100 events, then filters them out to decrypted text messages. The counter is for all events, so the real message count might be lower, as all other event types get ignored. I plan on adding exports of media and other types, where this counting might be improved, when I'm done with the plans below.

Roadmap

Plans for features/improvements (no eta):

• Add CLI arguments
  • Low priority.
• Switch for order of messages (chronologically or reverse)
  • Low priority.
• Direct export to a file
  • Export in formats like json?
• Improve fetching messages
• Silent mode, import a preset file with account data
  • This is useful for periodic exports and debugging.

There's more, but these will be focused on first.