RSS Feeds -> OPML -> List of websites...how?

January 26, 2009 2:19 PM

How do I get a list of all the blogs I'm subscribed to, plus their URLs?

I use FeedDemon/Newsgator. I'd like to generate a list of all my feeds, plus the site URL, into one document. Categorisation doesn't really matter at this moment.

How do I accomplish this? I figure I'll need the OPML file, but how do I turn it into something readable?

If possible I'd like the URL of the SITE, not of the RSS feed. Aside from a bunch of searching feeds, this shouldn't be a problem. However, I do know that a bunch of the sites I subscribe to use something like Feedburner to manage their feeds. How do I get the source URL?

I tried searching Google but I must be missing a keyword because I can't get anything useful.

posted by divabat to technology (5 comments total)

I assume you've tried reading the OPML file yourself, in a browser or text editor, and it's not easy enough to read?

In that case, this is an easy text-processing problem, but I don't know of any pre-packaged solution.
posted by grobstein at 2:46 PM on January 26

You can visualize OPML feeds with grazr, here is an example. Try the different view options.

You can see if the OPML file has the site addresses by looking for htmlUrl in it, as opposed to xmlUrl which is for feed addresses. If the OPML doesn't have links to the sites, you need a somewhat sophisticated web-service that fetches the feeds and parses them, most likely a feed reader.
posted by Tobu at 3:44 PM on January 26

- Do you actually want to know how to do it, or do you just want it done?
- Is this something you need to do often, or just this once?

If you just need it done, and just this once, I'll do it for you (it's a very short process using Emacs). Just memail a link to the OPML file.

OTOH, if you actually want to know how or if you need to do it regularly, I'll try and describe how to do it.
posted by systematic at 5:43 PM on January 26

systematic: I personally just need it done just this once; however, I've got a few requests from other people who need to do the same, so whichever's better for you I suppose.
posted by divabat at 10:38 PM on January 26

As grobstein noted, the OPML file was readable but clunky. My techy boyfriend came up with something that converted OPML to CSV. It's not pretty but it's what I needed. Yay!
posted by divabat at 5:37 AM on January 27