OneNote: Fix nested list to-do items being corrupted on import#543
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jamescqcampbell wants to merge 3 commits intoobsidianmd:masterfrom
Open
OneNote: Fix nested list to-do items being corrupted on import#543jamescqcampbell wants to merge 3 commits intoobsidianmd:masterfrom
jamescqcampbell wants to merge 3 commits intoobsidianmd:masterfrom
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convertTags was injecting literal "- [ ] " text into element innerHTML for data-tag="to-do" elements. turndown then escaped the brackets, producing "\- \[ \] " instead of a real task-list item. For to-do elements inside a <li>, insert <input type="checkbox"> as the first child of the <li> so the GFM turndown rule emits "- [ ] " / "- [x] " correctly. The surrounding <ol>/<ul> structure already encodes the nesting depth, so indentation is preserved for free. For top-level <p data-tag="to-do"> elements, replace the paragraph with <ul><li><input type="checkbox">…</li></ul>. The OneNote Graph API does not encode visual indentation for these elements — they appear as flat <p> tags regardless of how they look in the UI. removeExtraListItemParagraphs extended from `li > p:first-child` to also match `li > input:first-child + p` so the marginless paragraph wrapper is still removed after convertTags inserts a checkbox before it.
Set up vitest + jsdom as the test framework (no existing test runner in
this project). The DOM-transformation functions used in processFile are
extracted into onenote-converter.ts so they can be exercised without the
full Obsidian runtime; onenote.ts retains its own inline implementations
and is unchanged by this commit.
Tests cover the five cases in onenote-indented-example.html:
1. Indented numbered list — inner items indented at correct depth
2. Indented unordered list — inner items indented at correct depth
3. Indented numbered todos — "[ ]" at each nesting level, correctly indented
4. Indented unordered todos — "[ ]" at each nesting level, correctly indented
5. Flat todos — four <p data-tag="to-do"> elements each become a top-level
"- [ ]" task-list item with no indentation (the API provides none)
Covers every element type in onenote.html: plain paragraphs, bold/italic/strikethrough, highlights, task-list items (checked and unchecked), unordered and ordered lists, fenced code blocks, inline code, citations, H1–H3 headings, internal and external links, GFM tables, and note tags.
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Fixes two related bugs causing nested list to-do items to be corrupted on import.
My issue
I used the importer to import my notebook containing multiple nested ordered lists of tasks. Rather than being flattened out (as I know OneNote can have issues with this data not being present in the html output), they were not present in the output at all.
From my test file:
The imported obsidian file looked like:
This PR fixes this issue in the first commit, adds tests for the commit in the second commit and adds regression testing against a comprehensive test file in the third commit.
Please consider merging the first commit and fixing my problem. I am more than happy to refactor as necessary.
I couldn't see any testing and wrote the tests to confirm my own problem was solved and didn't impact the existing functionality. They are not essential for this PR though and can be ignored if you do not want to add testing to this repo.
Problems
convertTagshandleddata-tag="to-do"by injecting literal- [ ]intothe element's
innerHTML. Turndown then escaped those characters, producing\- \[ \] Task textinstead of a task-list item. This affected flat<p data-tag="to-do">paragraphs and to-do items inside nested<ol>/<ul>lists, where the result was
1. \- \[ \] Outerinstead of- [ ].A secondary bug: the injection broke
removeExtraListItemParagraphs(introduced in #363), which relies on
li > p:first-child— after injectionthe paragraph was no longer the first child, causing extra blank lines between
nested list levels.
Fix
convertTags: for to-do elements inside a<li>, insert<input type="checkbox">as the first child of the<li>so the GFMturndown rule produces
- [ ]/- [x]natively. For top-level<p data-tag="to-do">elements (which the OneNote Graph API always emitsflat regardless of visual indentation), replace the paragraph with
<ul><li><input type="checkbox">…</li></ul>.removeExtraListItemParagraphs: selector extended fromli > p:first-childto also match
li > input:first-child + p.Testing
Commits 2 and 3 add vitest + jsdom. DOM-transformation functions are extracted
into
onenote-converter.tsfor testability;onenote.tsis refactored todelegate its five pipeline methods to
onenote-converter.tsso that thetested code and production code stay in sync.
onenote-indented-example.html(fixture fromthe author's personal OneNote, 2026-04-18), covering all five affected cases:
indented numbered lists, indented unordered lists, numbered to-do lists,
unordered to-do lists, and flat to-do paragraphs. All pass.
onenote.html, covering allelement types handled before this change. All pass. Not covered:
convertMathML,escapeTextNodes, and the MathML error-fallback path. Statement coverage: 87%.Source OneNote page for onenote-indented-example.html as it renders in OneNote.
Source OneNote page for onenote.html as it renders in OneNote. NB, I don't want to leak my OneNote userId so I'd prefer to avoid sharing a PDF.
