enl-to-ris

Convert a legacy EndNote library (.enl, pre-EndNote-20 format) to RIS, without needing EndNote installed.

Why this exists

Before EndNote 20, the .enl file was just a small pointer; the actual records lived in a companion <library name>.Data folder, stored as a MyISAM database — the same on-disk table format MySQL/MariaDB used before InnoDB became the default. There's no public spec for this exact layout, and hand-parsing MyISAM's binary "dynamic record" format is fragile: long fields can be split across storage blocks, and a small mistake produces corrupted output silently. That's presumably why no converter for this specific case seems to exist online.

Rather than reimplement that binary format from scratch, this script uses the real thing: a portable, no-install build of MariaDB Server as an explicit dependency. On first run it downloads and caches the official portable Windows package; on every run it briefly starts a private, throwaway instance pointed at a copy of the library's table files, reads the records over plain SQL, and shuts the instance down.

EndNote 20+ switched the format to plain SQLite, which doesn't need any of this — this tool is only for older libraries.

Requirements

• Windows (uses MariaDB's portable Windows build)
• Python 3.10+
• pip install pymysql
• Internet access on first run only, to download MariaDB Server (~90 MB, GPLv2, from archive.mariadb.org), cached afterwards under %LOCALAPPDATA%\enl_to_ris
• The .enl file and its companion <library name>.Data folder, both present side by side (the .Data folder holds the MyISAM index file; without it, the legacy table can't be opened at all)

Usage

python enl_to_ris.py "MyLibrary.enl" MyLibrary.ris

If the output path is omitted, it defaults to the input filename with a .ris extension.

Reference-type mapping

EndNote stores each record's type (Journal Article, Book, ...) as a small integer, whose meaning is defined by the application's type list — not stored in the library file itself. REFTYPE_MAP in the script currently covers the codes verified by hand against real records (0 = Journal Article, 1 = Book, 7 = Book Section). Any other code is exported as the generic RIS type GEN, and the script prints a summary of every code it found so you can extend the map for your own library.

Example run

$ python enl_to_ris.py "MyLibrary.enl" MyLibrary.ris
Converted 73 records to MyLibrary.ris

Tests

py -m unittest discover -s tests -v

The conversion logic is tested without MariaDB. A full conversion of a real library runs only if one is present in example data/ (gitignored: it holds a personal bibliography) and the portable MariaDB is already cached; otherwise that test is skipped.

Limitations

• Windows only.
• Metadata only — attached PDFs/figures in the .Data folder are not exported.
• REFTYPE_MAP may need extending for libraries using reference types other than Journal Article / Book / Book Section (the script tells you exactly which codes are unmapped).

License

MIT