How do I catalog all of my iOS apps in one place?
September 4, 2011 12:43 PM Subscribe
I want to put together a list of every iOS app I've ever purchased. And I've purchased a LOT. I know I can go into my account information on Itunes and pull purchase history, but it only displays in small 'batches' at a time and I can't cut & paste from there. Next thought is to pull it from Itunes receipts in Gmail, but I don't want to have to go into each email & cut/paste into another document. Is there any way to concatenate all the emails automagically? Is there another solution for this I'm not thinking of?
The answer is just around the corner in iOS5. You an see a full list with all purchases.
posted by Hazy Star at 2:44 PM on September 4, 2011
posted by Hazy Star at 2:44 PM on September 4, 2011
I wrote a Perl script that parses Apple's Mac and iOS App Store email receipts. MetaFilter breaks source code, so this script is available here.
I tested this with receipts exported from Apple Mail version 5.0 (1244.2/1244.3) in text format, using Perl v5.12.3 under Mac OS X 10.7.1.
To use this script, you feed it your receipt (again, in text format), as in the following example:
$ parseReceipt.pl < "Your\ receipt\ No.1234567890.txt"
This script scrapes name, vendor, type and price information from the receipt and appends it to a text file called receiptCatalog.txt, which is stored in your current working directory. You can edit the Perl script if you want to change the name and location of this file (look at the variable $catalogFn on line 7).
You can only feed one email to this script, but if you have exported all your emails to text in one place, this is easily addressed with the following one-liner, e.g.:
$ find . -name 'Your\ receipt\ No.*.txt' -print0 | xargs -0 ./parseReceipt.pl
This goes through all the receipt files in your working directory (Your\ receipt\ No.*.txt) and parses them, appending their data to the receiptCatalog.txt file.
This is pretty hacky, but it seems to work okay. I haven't tested this with receipts exported from other email clients, which may do different things with formatting than Apple Mail. In this case, you'll need to export and examine a sample receipt file to see how it is formatted, and then you will need to tweak the parseReceipt.pl script accordingly.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:25 PM on September 4, 2011
I tested this with receipts exported from Apple Mail version 5.0 (1244.2/1244.3) in text format, using Perl v5.12.3 under Mac OS X 10.7.1.
To use this script, you feed it your receipt (again, in text format), as in the following example:
$ parseReceipt.pl < "Your\ receipt\ No.1234567890.txt"
This script scrapes name, vendor, type and price information from the receipt and appends it to a text file called receiptCatalog.txt, which is stored in your current working directory. You can edit the Perl script if you want to change the name and location of this file (look at the variable $catalogFn on line 7).
You can only feed one email to this script, but if you have exported all your emails to text in one place, this is easily addressed with the following one-liner, e.g.:
$ find . -name 'Your\ receipt\ No.*.txt' -print0 | xargs -0 ./parseReceipt.pl
This goes through all the receipt files in your working directory (Your\ receipt\ No.*.txt) and parses them, appending their data to the receiptCatalog.txt file.
This is pretty hacky, but it seems to work okay. I haven't tested this with receipts exported from other email clients, which may do different things with formatting than Apple Mail. In this case, you'll need to export and examine a sample receipt file to see how it is formatted, and then you will need to tweak the parseReceipt.pl script accordingly.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:25 PM on September 4, 2011
On my iPod Touch, running 4.3.3, if I open the App Store and go to Updates, there's an entry at the top called "Aankopen". (My iTunes store speaks Dutch.) I imagine in English it would be "Purchased". Clicking on that item gives me two tabs, "Alles" (All) and "Niet op deze iPod" (not on this iPod). "Alles" is a list of everything I've downloaded on any device. Takes a while to scroll through, but does include everything in one place.
However, I can't think of a way of getting the information off the device, short of screenshotting every screenful and emailing the screenshots to yourself...
If you go with parsing the receipt emails, bear in mind that Apple stopped listing free apps on the receipts within the last year or so. (Well, the Dutch iTunes store did, anyway.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 4:32 PM on September 4, 2011
However, I can't think of a way of getting the information off the device, short of screenshotting every screenful and emailing the screenshots to yourself...
If you go with parsing the receipt emails, bear in mind that Apple stopped listing free apps on the receipts within the last year or so. (Well, the Dutch iTunes store did, anyway.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 4:32 PM on September 4, 2011
Response by poster: Blazecock, thank you so much for going to all that trouble, but I should have mentioned I'm running Windows 7. ManyLegged, appreciate the tip but I am talking easily over 150 apps so going through the 'purchased' list on ipod/ipad is torturous.
posted by mattholomew at 6:32 PM on September 4, 2011
posted by mattholomew at 6:32 PM on September 4, 2011
I don't have too much experience with Perl and scripting under Windows, though I'm sure it's possible with some tweaking. If you're using Windows, though, you could try to run scripts in Cygwin.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:33 PM on September 4, 2011
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:33 PM on September 4, 2011
Applist.me will do it, or AppShopper.com has an importer (Mac and Windows) that will list them on your appshopper.com account.
posted by IndigoRain at 7:54 PM on September 4, 2011
posted by IndigoRain at 7:54 PM on September 4, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:15 PM on September 4, 2011