"Create a Chrome bookmark html file to import list of URLs"

Updated 09152022-122221

• Source
• Gist
• WTF
• Local
• Simplenote Local

I recently switched RSS providers and I could only extract my saved posts as a list of URLs. So I thought I’d add these to a bookmark folder in Chrome. However, Chrome bookmark import only accepts a specifically formatted .html file.

So if you have a file with all your urls, name this file ‘url.txt’ and run this script to create a .html file that you can import in Chrome (hat-tip to GeoffreyPlitt).

#!/bin/bash
#
# Run this script on a file named urls.txt with all your URLs and pipe the output to an HTML file.
# Example: ./convert_url_file.sh > bookmarks.html
 
echo "<!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1>"
echo '<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">'
echo '<TITLE>Bookmarks</TITLE>'
echo '<H1>Bookmarks</H1>'
echo '<DL><p>'
  cat urls.txt |
  while read L; do
    echo -n '    <DT><A HREF="';
        echo ''"$L"'">'"$L"'</A>';
  done
echo "</DL><p>"