Has the API changed?

[oss-vineet]

After using python decode-ColorNote.py -p xxxx c:\folder my file decodes perfectly fine, as evident from the notes.bin file but I still get UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xf7 in position 1939: invalid start byte.

Now my notes are in multiple languages but opening notes.bin in Notepad++ and setting it to UTF-8 shows that they translate well and without any problem. But in between the notes, there are characters like \x0\x0\x0\x2\x0\x0\x1\xF7\x0\x0\x2\xA0 and this is where the problem is coming from.

I tried setting json_chunk = json.loads(chunk.decode("utf-8", "ignore")) but that just leads to json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Extra data: line 1 column 7 (char 6) since the decoded file doesn't seem to be formatted in a proper JSON format. Any help would be appreciated

[seiki]

did you ever work this out?

[oss-vineet]

did you ever work this out?

Unfortunately not. I improvised and just deleted the unwanted characters between the starting and ending curly braces of the actual JSON dict.

[seiki]

I ended up using the alternative method of getting the sqlite database like it says on this repo:
https://github.com/olejorgenb/ColorNote-backup-decryptor

[oss-vineet]

I ended up using the alternative method of getting the sqlite database like it says on this repo:
https://github.com/olejorgenb/ColorNote-backup-decryptor

Thank you, I will take a look at it. How did you do this? Maybe you could submit a PR or fork the library and make changes to combine the two.

[seiki]

I didn't code anything. I did the whole getting the .db file from a rooted android thing:
https://dbohdan.com/wiki/colornote

[fcoiffie]

@vineet131 Could you share a .doc file which has the encoding problem ?

[oss-vineet]

notes - Copy.txt

@vineet131 Could you share a .doc file which has the encoding problem ?

Here you go! Deleted most of the data, but you can get a gist of it

I didn't code anything. I did the whole getting the .db file from a rooted android thing: https://dbohdan.com/wiki/colornote

Thank you for this! I wasn't aware, let me check it out. But would be so nice if I can do this via Python

[fcoiffie]

In fact, I don't understand the structure of the decrypted data.
Usually, we have:

But in your file, we cannot see the beginning of the JSON part and the length is invalid:

[oss-vineet]

Well, I used the same code as I pointed out in the first comment. Does this have something to do with the fact that I don't use English characters, and your code only accounts for notes written in English?

[mayank-ramnani]

Well, I used the same code as I pointed out in the first comment. Does this have something to do with the fact that I don't use English characters, and your code only accounts for notes written in English?

@seiki
After getting the sqlite db, how did you decrypt the single encrypted/locked notes?

[seiki]

Well, I used the same code as I pointed out in the first comment. Does this have something to do with the fact that I don't use English characters, and your code only accounts for notes written in English?

@seiki After getting the sqlite db, how did you decrypt the single encrypted/locked notes?

I don't remember much but isn't it already decoded there?

[oss-vineet]

I was able to partially solve my problems with this fix:

part_chunk = chunk.decode("utf-8", "ignore")
json_chunk = json.loads(part_chunk)

I still get an error:

json_chunk = json.loads(part_chunk)
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\json\__init__.py", line 346, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\json\decoder.py", line 341, in decode
    raise JSONDecodeError("Extra data", s, end)
json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Extra data: line 1 column 7 (char 6)

But at least I am able to at least get the decrypted JSON file out of it with all my notes.