Changes to OPML import/export in 2.5.0

Posted on Aug 9, 2023

In 2.5.0, an OPML export will include

feed specific settings, such as Fetch full articles by default and Open items by default with
global settings such as Theme, Article style, and maybe most significantly
your BLOCK LIST.

This is a nice quality of life change if you ever need to re-install Feeder, or you want to copy everything over to another device. I finally read what the OPML specification allows (turns out a lot!) and this is an example of the data structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml version="1.1" xmlns:feeder="https://nononsenseapps.com/feeder">
  <head>
    <title>
      Feeder
    </title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <outline title="Example Tag" text="Example Tag">
      <outline feeder:notify="false" feeder:fullTextByDefault="false" feeder:openArticlesWith="" feeder:alternateId="false" title="Example Feed" text="Example Feed" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://example.com/1/rss.xml"/>
    </outline>
    <feeder:settings>
      <feeder:setting key="pref_feed_item_style" value="SUPER_COMPACT"/>
      <feeder:setting key="pref_body_text_scale" value="1.6"/>
      <feeder:setting key="pref_is_mark_as_read_on_scroll" value="true"/>
      <feeder:blocked pattern="foo"/>
    </feeder:settings>
  </body>
</opml>

Warning about shared block lists

This means it’s possible to share only a block list with someone else. Just open it in a text editor and remove everything else.

For example like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml version="1.1" xmlns:feeder="https://nononsenseapps.com/feeder">
  <head>
    <title>
      Feeder
    </title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <feeder:settings>
      <feeder:blocked pattern="foo"/>
    </feeder:settings>
  </body>
</opml>

There is currently no kind of validation for these patterns. So, hypothetically, the file you import has been modified, then it might get you stuck in a crash loop after import.

So please don’t modify the individual patterns outside of Feeder for now.