The del.icio.us loader

You want to use del.icio.us, but you have already dozens of bookmarks in Firefox? No problem. My new del.icio.us loader is the solution.

Just export your bookmarks and upload the file. Then you can choose which tags to add for each bookmark. If you don’t want to add all of your bookmarks, just choose the ones you like to add. Click the last button et voila, your bookmarks are magically added to your del.icio.us account. The script even recognizes the date, on which you’ve added the link to your bookmarks.

So please tell me if there is anything to improve and, most important, tell me if there are any bugs.

Published by

Julian Bez

Julian Bez

Julian Bez is a software engineer and former startup founder from Berlin, Germany.

  • http://www.petrosdimitriadis.com petros

    that is great i was looking for that all the time, good work

  • John

    Thanks man, this works great!! Might want to make a note not to use commas between tags, it took me a while to clean up my first upload.

  • John

    Thanks man, this works great! Don’t put commas between tag names though.

  • Mario Valente

    With personal bookmarks a bit over the thousand (1000) mark I’m unable to use your loader, it stops with about 80 bookmarks. Perhaps publishing the code would be better ? Save you on CPU and bandwidth…

    — MV

  • Jon

    Great importer. It would be great if it could pick up on the folder that the bookmark was in and use that as an optional tag.

  • vex

    Only imported 59 bookmarks out of more than a hundred. :(

  • vex

    PS. You should put a note about this limit somewhere, it took me hours to edit all the tags, and it was all for nothing.

  • http://www.julian-bez.de/blog/ Julian

    @vex: That’s not good… I’ll see what I can do, maybe there was a problem with the del.icio.us API. I haven’t heard any other negative feedback yet, so mostly it seems to work.

    Update: Now the script checks the response headers from del.icio.us. Additionally, I doubled the time limit for the script to execute.

  • Rog

    Found a bug. I had a bookmark with quotes in it (%22), and it stuffed up the rendering of the list of bookmarks.

  • mic

    are you kidding? dozens of bookmarks? i have thousands. i’d love to use this; it’s the only way i’ll use del.icio.us. perhaps the script could pre-scan the bookmarks list to determine an appropriate timeout value? hope to see this updated, thanks!

  • http://www.julian-bez.de/blog/ Julian

    perhaps the script could pre-scan the bookmarks list to determine an appropriate timeout value?

    This is what it actually does. The problem is just the del.icio.us API, which allows only one query per second. As far as I understand, this means it takes one second to add one bookmark and so you would have to be very patient to add thousands of bookmarks.

  • http://zwocent.com marco

    Unfortunately it’s not working for me at all. It says uploaded file ok, but doesn’t show any bookmark at all.
    Tried on:
    Firefox 1.01/1.02 Mac OS X
    Firefox 1.01 Win XP

  • http://www.davidhogg.com/ David Hogg

    The uploader seems to work fine. The only problem I had was when I made a PayPal donation in the middle of the upload procedure. I made the donation, but I could not return to the page listing the bookmarks that were uploaded. I therefore lost track of the uploads completely. How can you get back to the upload page after going to the PayPal site?

  • v

    Awesome dude… I didn’t donate… but visited your sponsers…

  • http://www.julian-bez.de/blog/ Julian

    Thanks a lot!

  • alternapop

    using firefox on the mac, i can only get the loader to see a few of many bookmarks. all of my bookmarks are in folders and subfolders. i’ve tried various things to hack around it.
    any ideas?

  • Sam

    I agree with Jon (#5 above). It would be great if there was a way to turn folder names into tags. I’ve got 155 bookmarks on this PC alone, all carefully organized into folders which I’d be more than happy to rename as tags. Heck, half of the folder names are single words already, and most of the rest I’d just hyphenate. All that you’d have to do is use an array to hold tags, and push/pop folder names as you enter/leave folders. (BTW, if you’d like to host it, I’ve put together a Perl script that does the reverse, turning del.icio.us bookmarks into a bookmarks.html file for importing. It does some clever tricks to create a sensible hierarchy of folders, unlike some other similar programs.)

  • http://www.alexemde.de Alexandra

    Thanks for this great tool. I just want to share a solution to one problem I found:

    When I first tried to upload some bookmarks, it said uploaded file ok but didn’t show any bookmarks – and after some hacking around, I found the workaround: bookmarks with no ADD_DATE won’t be processed, so I simply added that bit of information (ADD_DATE=”1112561407″) and all worked like a charm.

  • alternapop

    thanks alexandra, that hint worked for me… i just hacked my firefox exported html file and it finally imported all the links. my bookmark file basically consist of a bunch of lines like this:


    <DT><A HREF="http://www.link.com" ADD_DATE="1112561407" >Link Name</A>
    <DT><A HREF="http://www.link2.com" ADD_DATE="1112561407" >Link 2 Name</A>

    i deleted all of stuff before and after the actual links, leaving only the lines with the links

  • http://www.julian-bez.de/blog/ Julian

    hehe… I didn’t know that there would be bookmarks without ADD_DATE…
    The script uses regular expressions to find bookmarks (I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it, but it works for now) and I’ll try change it, so it will grab bookmarks with no ADD_DATE, too.

  • StudlyChris

    Worked great for me! I was just concerned that you have to give your username and password to the site in order to pull over your bookmarks. I just hope the guy doesn’t log all of our passwords. Great program though.

    Thanks.

  • Michael

    Instead of giving all imported bookmarks tags in one fell swoop, wouldn’t it be easier if we could type the tags in the Keywords part of the bookmarks in Firefox, and then this script would check for this and input the bookmarks accordingly?

  • robb

    Any chance that the uploader will ever populate the del.icio.us tags with the folder names of the firefox bookmarks? That would really be wonderful…

  • http://www.xslf.com Xslf

    I am attempting to use your tools with bookmarks I export from Epiphany (gecko based browser). It says “Uploading file: Okay”, but no bookmarks appear.

    Any ideas what’s wrong?

    Thanks!

  • http://www.julian-bez.de/blog/ Julian

    Thanks for using the tool.
    I currently don’t have time for any further development. If I do, I will try to implement some of the features you’re asking for.

    “Uploading file: Okay” is just displayed if a file is received. It doesn’t say anything about it’s content.

    Keep watching this site. And click on some of these nice links in the blue box… :-)

  • ernie

    Thanks. This is just what I’ve been looking for. Works great on Mozilla 1.2.

  • Randy

    I’d like to add my vote for the converting folder names into tags feature. I too have hundreds of bookmarks already organised into folders. I’d probably revist the created tags but at least it’s a starting point rather than starting from scratch.

  • http://www.moosehat.com Stewart Marshall

    I had trouble uploading my links. I then changed my password on del.icio.us to one with out a quote – ‘ ‘ in and it all worked find after that!

    Many thanks!

  • http://www.gordonmclean.co.uk/ Gordon

    Absolute live saver this, thanks so much.

    Question though: what’s with the “added” link at the end of the import batch??

  • http://www.julian-bez.de/blog/ Julian

    Do you mean Jobazaar?
    That’s a new website I launched recently. It is added to your del.icio.us account, so that you don’t have to.

  • http://singpolyma.blog.com Singpolyma

    What are the chances of you releasing the code at any point? (I’m guessing not good since you haven’t)

  • http://www.julian-bez.de/ Julian

    I do not plan to release the code :-(

    And unfortunately (for you) I have to say that I don’t have the time and effort to continue development. Most of the people seem to be satisfied with what the tool does at this stage.

  • Paschal Nee

    Very good – does exactly what it says on the tin

  • http://badrinath.blogspot.com Badrinath.V.S

    Great tool, the interface could have been better.Still it did server my purpose.Have been looking for such a tool for a long time.First attempt only 151 of my 403 bookmarks went into del.icio.us. I had to delete my account and recreate it to try the second time.Even then only 337 went thru, but I guess I will enter the remaining manually.

    Thanks for the tool, not rich enough to donate so shall visit your sponsorers(already visited some when I tried the first time)

  • Orx

    Doesnt work for me at all, i check 1 or 100 of my bookmarks, and when it’s time to post those to delicious, the loader returns an error message for each one of them.

  • Orx

    nevermind that, already figured it out!!! i guess my bookmarks were already uploaded and i forgot to refresh, hence the error when trying to upload them again. Thanks for the tool!

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  • bussiere

    erf i’ve got a
    Error
    Possible file upload attack! Here’s some debugging info: Array ( [bfile] => Array ( [name] => bookmarks.html [type] => [tmp_name] => [error] => 1 [size] => 0 ) )
    error :/

    thks bussiere

  • http://basilar.net Domonkos Nagy

    a standalone application that does the same and includes its source is available at: http://basilar.net/sw/DeliciousPoster.jar

  • Itai Raz

    Upload was successful, however, the result page shows all bookmarks as errors (even though it was successful and the bookmarks were uploaded correctly). If you’d like I have saved a printout of the screen – email me.

  • http://www.julian-bez.de/ Julian

    @Itai:

    Bug fixed. Thanks.

  • http://www.deadinsect.co.uk anthony

    brilliant. ppl like you make the web a better place for everyone else!!!!

  • http://www.jorisroovers.com JRoovers

    There seems to be a problem when your password contains special charachters like & and “, it probably has something to do with htmlspecialchars function… changed my password and everything worked fine …

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  • samuel

    You reccomend that users only upload 50 at a time, how about partitioning the bookmarks into bundles of 50 – allowing user to just select that 50 to be safe.

    I would also like to see the link entries numerated, its just easier to reference too.

    with links already organised into folders how about carrying that over during this intermediate process and auto inserting that into the tag entry, it’ll be quicker

    thanks, i really needed this.

  • Samuel

    I suggest anyone using FF install the extension called “Tabbrowser Extensions” from http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/tabextensions/index.html.en

    As it will allow any link that is clicked to be automatically openend in a new window, if a link is opened in the same window as editing, when clicking ‘back’, all info seems to wipe, so this is better than selecting ‘open in new window’ from the right click menu.

    Thanks, it does work I now I have my >1500 link online :))

    Samuel, uk

  • gary

    great tool. i have been able to upload bookmarks from a couple machines now. For editing the tags while importing, it would be great if the previously entered tags could be selected or displayed while entering new tags. My bookmarks were pretty diverse, so adding a whole slew of tags takes some time.

  • http://www.katnoodle.com richard

    works great – many thanks :)

  • stefan

    your upload service cancel with the following error message:

    Error
    Possible file upload attack! Here’s some debugging info: Array ( [bfile] => Array ( [name] => bookmarks.html [type] => [tmp_name] => [error] => 1 [size] => 0 ) )

    i’ve many many bookmarks :) damn i want them imported in delicious :-/

  • http://blink.casa-z.org Johno

    I would love to see your site have the same functionality as the perl script here. Shouldn’t that be pretty easy with a little cgi-bin?

  • http://myspace.com/icecobra Scott

    Did not work with Moz 1.7 or firefox 1.5
    Error
    Possible file upload attack! Here’s some debugging info: Array ( [bfile] => Array ( [name] => mars rover.html [type] => [tmp_name] => [error] => 1 [size] => 0 ) )

  • Ac_Me

    Great tool, thanks

  • http://www.makingchutney.com chutney

    Trying to get my Google Reader sites into delicious using your tool, with no success. I select the file, press upload, and it doesn’t pull any of the links.

    I’ve tried editing the opml that Google Reader generates (which seems to be xhtml-ized) in case that was the trick. But no dice.

    Any ideas?

  • http://chutneymakingchutney.com chutney

    Oh, and it worked great with my Firefox bookmarks (a couple months back).

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  • http://titab.blogspot.com Titab

    Mate, I am gonna test it now and then I’ll let you know if something is missing

  • David Hatch

    I can’t seem to find a link to the tool. Can someone post the link?

  • mike
  • Renidea

    Thank you so much Mike for posting that link, I was begining to think the del.icio.us import tool was a myth :)

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  • lbco

    Great, thanks