OperaHotlist2HTML is a Perl script that converts Opera bookmarks (called "Hotlist") to HTML 4.01. It will also convert to Netscape/Mozilla compatible bookmark files as well. By default, it doesn't process the creation or last visited dates to help ensure privacy of the users. It may be distributed under the conditions of the Gnu General Public License.
Given this sample hotlist as input, here is a basic sample of output html from the program and here is a sample Mozilla-compatible bookmark file. For another example, here is my personal bookmark file as generated by this command-line.
$ operahotlist2html [ options ] [ < INPUT.adr ] [ > OUTPUT.html ]
By default, it reads from STDIN and writes to STDOUT.
-h, --help Print this help message
-q, --quiet Supress warning messages
-v, --version Print version
--debug Print debugging output to STDERR
-i, --input=PATH Use this file as input instead of STDIN
-o, --output=PATH Output to this file instead of STDOUT
-d, --header=STRING Heading at top of page
-t, --title=STRING Title in HTML header
-s, --style=STRING Stylesheet for output HTML
--google-analytics Include Google Analytics script
--descr-sep=STRING HTML to Separate descript from title
-x, --exclude-folder=STRING Regular expression of folders to exclude
e.g. "\A(News and Weather|Sports)\Z"
--no-favicons Don't include favicons in output.
--favicon-size=STRING Force height, width of favicons.
-m, --mozilla Generate Mozilla/Netscape bookmark file
--include-dates In Mozilla output, include bookmark dates
--unsort-folder-list Print folder list unsorted
--include-extra-folders Include the 'Find Results' and 'Trash' folders
-r, --hr=STRING HTML for a separator instead of <hr>
-n, --nodateontop Print datestamp only at bottom
By default, it reads from standard in and writes to standard out. So you could do for instance:
$ operahotlist2html < ~/.opera/opera.adr > htmlfile.html
Or an equivalent command which uses command line options instead of pipes:
$ operahotlist2html -i $HOME/.opera/opera.adr -o htmlfile.html
Or if you want to create a file for import into Mozilla:
$ operahotlist2html -i $HOME/.opera/opera.adr -o htmlfile.html \
--mozilla --include-dates
Here is a more elaborate HTML output example:
$ operahotlist2html \
--title='Hotlist for somebody' \
--header='<h1>Hotlist for <a href="index.html">this user</a></h1>' \
--style='someCSSfile.css' \
--descr-sep='<br> — ' \
--hr='<hr width="50%">' \
--exclude-folder="\APrivate\Z"
--input=$HOME/.opera/opera6.adr \
--output=$HOME/html/opera_hotlist.html
This program was originally written for Opera for Linux, but as of
version 2.9 it works on Opera for Windows hotlists without
modification of the hotlist. You will need to install perl and modify
the first line to get it to work (e.g. try something like
#!c:/perl/bin/perl.exe -w) . Previous versions required
converting the hotlist to unix text format with programs such as
dos2unix or
recode.
The current version is always available at: http://www.alanhoyle.com/operahotlist2html/dist/oph2h.tar.gz
The fully expanded filename is: operahotlist2html-2.15.tar.gz
Old versions are available here: http://www.alanhoyle.com/operahotlist2html/dist or at SourceForge.net
The "daily binary" version is available at operahotlist2html
I also announce current releases and make them available at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ophotlist2html/
and at
http://freshmeat.net/projects/ophotlist2html/
Opera 7 includes "export bookmarks to html" functionality similar to this program, however there are still reasons to use this script:
For further comparison, here is a sample of the HTML export from Opera 7 and here is sample of output html from my program both from the same Hotlist.
Valid HTML might not be generated if the folder names contain non-alpha-numeric characters. According to the HTML specifications [1] [2]:
"ID and NAME tokens must begin with a letter ([A-Za-z]) and may be followed by any number of letters, digits ([0-9]), hyphens ("-"), underscores ("_"), colons (":"), and periods (".")."
Ami Fischman contributed this diff file which, when applied to OperaHotlist2HTML version 1.3, changes the output to something that Netscape can grok as a bookmark file (i.e. the ~/.netscape/bookmarks.html). This is completely redundant as of version 2.6, as you can use the --mozilla --include-dates command line options to generate similar output.
Rijk van Geijtenbeek <rijk@opera.com> contributed significant updates to 2.12. He even uses it himself. In particular, he did the following:
You might also be interested in the following:
The OperaHotlist2HTML perl code is based on hotlist2xbel written by Haakon Nilsen <haakon@nilsen.com>. http://sips.midian.net/hotlist2xbel/ The direct link no longer works. You might try http://quit.net/~haakon/.
© Alan Hoyle
Last update: $Id: index.html,v 1.30 2006/06/07 18:38:45 alanh Exp $
Originally created: 23 March 2001
ophotlist2html-mail@alanhoyle.com