Bookmarks in VVVV

vvvv beta question
#1

Hey vvvvolks!

Question for you… I am planning a data visualization with my Google Chrome Bookmarks and I am searching for a way to easily import all my links into VVVV.

I already tried to use several bookmarks services like delicious, evernote, kippt, pocket, and use their API. But I have limitations with each service (e.g. a limit of links, corrupt .json file, …)
Currently I am trying to read the exported .html file from my bookmark manager within Chrome. This way I receive all my links but my folder structure is gone…

Do you guys have any ideas how I could read the folder structure of my bookmarks and have access to all my links?

Further information would be an asset:

creation date
last day of access
preview picture of site (delicious does that for example)
tags

I also wondered if there is a way to automatically generate my own spreadsheet or text file but I don´t know how I could possibly do that…

Any suggestions are helpful and I´ll be happy to share my patches as soon as I have a promising lead :)

Cheers!

#2

Hi, dl-110.

I found, that Chrome have some kind of Bookmarks plugin API - http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/bookmarks.html. I’m also interested in VVVV as data visualisation tool, so maybe i can help you to write export extension. I not experienced in writing Chrome plugins, but hope it will not take too long for me. Or maybe someone more experienced in Javascript can help with it.

If you need JSON parser, we have one in contributions and also i have another one with JSONPath suppport - https://github.com/smakhtin/VVVV.Nodes.JSON.

#3

Hey!

Yeah I already used the JSON parser but it wouldn´t work with the delicious API. Somehow I feel that the JSON file from delicious is corrupted since the parser works just fine with other APIs.

And for the Chrome API - I saw the site earlier but I´m not very familiar with Javascript. I know Processing quite well but unfortunately that doesn´t help much and I don´t have the time to learn Javascript and build the visualization within the next weeks…

Maybe I just end up writing a code to generate my own database out of my bookmarks :)

#4

Finally i created a simple chrome extension and exported all my bookmarks to JSON - https://gist.github.com/4012100 . It’s really simple in JavaScript.

You can download extension from this repo https://github.com/smakhtin/Chrome-Extensions. All you need to do is install it and check JSON output in console http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/tut_debugging.html.

#5

Thanks alg,
That is amazing! Just one question… I can see the data being displayed in the debugger when I set breakpoints but is there a way to save the bookmarks tree to a actual file?

Thanks!

#6

I will check it, but i think Chrome secure policy don’t allow you to save to external locations.

Breakpoints is not needed i think, just open console window- it’s output’s all logs from script since it’s first run.

#7

You could use https://www.google.com/bookmarks then export your bookmarks in a .html and parse it with XSLT node in vvvv.

#8

hm okay - I have to admit, I don´t fully understand it.
I run your extension and I can see this little, empty pop-up. Shouldn´t it show something? The only way to view my bookmarks so far is to open the debugging console and check the Scope Variables when a breakpoint is set…

#9

I pushed new version to Github - now it’s outputs file URL to popup window. You need just copy and paste it to your address bar and save the opened file.

#10

Hey alg! That looks great! Thanks!