Migrate all data from other readers

[sarmong]

I really liked miniflux and want to migrate to it from FreshRSS.

Is it possible to move (1) all the entries cached by FreshRSS, not just the ones that certain feed returns and (2) read/unread statuses of all the entries?

[Bubbu0129]

You can transact feeds by OPML files. They contains the feeds' URLs and some configurations. But old entries and read/unread status are stored in databases, whose schema aren't compatible and hard to migrate from one another.

[gingerbeardman]

The main problem with using only OPML for migration is that it will only grab as many as the feed currently contains. For example a YouTube Channel feed might grabs only 15 items as that is the limit of the feed. But in FreshRSS I have a lot more than that still unread/unwatched (I will get round to them, I'm just behind as I didn't start watching at channel launch).

Old items and unread status is exported as JSON from FreshRSS, for example.

[gingerbeardman]

I'm wondering if not having this data migrate is manageable for me or whether it locks me in to FreshRSS. Currently undecided.

Looking at my FreshRSS export... the unread articles are all marked in the data: not in the OPML, which is mostly just the feed URLS, but in the exported JSON for each feed, as "categories:user/-/state/com.google/unread". Looks like it is a leftover of Google Reader format data to me, but I don't know enough to be sure.

Example:

{
    "id": "tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/0005ee7b34b64995",
    "crawlTimeMsec": "1669587816302",
    "timestampUsec": "1669587816302997",
    "published": 1650710640,
    "title": "The Genesis Temple Podcast – Season 2",
    "canonical": [
        {
            "href": "https://genesistemple.com/the-genesis-temple-podcast-season-2"
        }
    ],
    "alternate": [
        {
            "href": "https://genesistemple.com/the-genesis-temple-podcast-season-2",
            "type": "text/html"
        }
    ],
    "categories": [
        "user/-/state/com.google/reading-list",
        "user/-/state/com.google/unread",
        "user/-/label/Game Design Vault",
        "user/-/label/Interviews and small talks",
        "user/-/label/Game Design",
        "user/-/label/Podcast"
    ],
    "origin": {
        "streamId": "feed/96",
        "htmlUrl": "https://genesistemple.com/",
        "title": "The Genesis Temple",
        "feedUrl": "https://genesistemple.com/feed"
    },
    "content": {
        "content": "<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://genesistemple.com/the-genesis-temple-podcast-season-2\">The Genesis Temple Podcast – Season 2</a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https://genesistemple.com/\">The Genesis Temple</a>.</p>"
    },
    "guid": "https://genesistemple.com/?p=5419",
    "author": "Damiano Gerli"
},

[jvoisin]

Thunderbird's OPML export contain categories, it would be nice if miniflux could import those as well, instead of having the user re-create them manually :)

[fguillot]

Miniflux already supports that. All categories are created automatically when importing an OPML file.

[fguillot]

nvm, I just saw your PR #2392. At some point, it would be a good idea to verify that OPML exports from other popular open-source projects are imported correctly into Miniflux.

[jvoisin]

Feel free to open an issue with a checklist of all the popular open-source projects so we can track (and add tests for) this :)