Most of the major aggregators have some form of OPML export included. Bloglines and NewsGator go above and beyond and have REST-like APIs for exporting your OPML. (Thanks to Greg Reinacker for hooking me up with their REST API).
I’m adding support for OPML import right now within TailRank. Pick a service, enter your username/password, and your feeds will be automatically imported into your TailRank account.
Rojo had this support back in the day but it appears the code has bit rot. I’ve reported this as a bug and hopefully they’ll get around to fixing/adding this.
This stuff is still too hard. Most of the current OPML export functionality within aggregators is just a checklist feature. Usually saving it to your local disk only. There’s no way to do this programatically from within a new application. In short OPML isn’t an API.
Who’s going to be the first aggregator out there to step up and add this support along side Bloglines and NewsGator? My Yahoo? My MSN? Attensa?
Wonder what Dave thinks of this?
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December 15, 2005 at 4:48 am
Personally, I would love for my aggregator to let me keep my OPML on a server somewhere and just let me provide a URL, username, and password for fetching it. (v1.1 would let me provide the same info for a location the app could POST it back with changes. Keep read/unread data in tyhe OPML and there’s your sync engine.)
If the aggregator guys would support the spec, I’d promise to make sure the server is available.
December 29, 2005 at 9:41 am
I just saw this — of course I think it’s a good idea, and an obvious next step. Do you want to do the hosting? If not, I already have a good back-end for hosting OPML here, if you want to use it, let me know.
December 29, 2005 at 2:19 pm
I’m planning on providing an API and I *think* I could do the hosting. I’m just trying to figure out if that makes sense.
The pending Google Reader API will also help out.
The major problem is that it needs cooperation from the feed aggregators and they seem to always want to take their time.
OPML is always a checklist feature and I don’t expect users to be demanding this type of functionality.
Better to lead with the carrot than the stick. Maybe if we had more systems like TailRank that integrate OPML support that more users will demand integration.
Kevin