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lemmy2opml

lemmy2opml.py is a tool to export and import subscriptions to Lemmy communities. It allows Lemmy users to easily follow their subscribed communities using an RSS feed reader, and to back up and share their subscribed communities.

Subscriptions are exported to an OPML file. The OPML file can be imported by most RSS feed readers. It can also be imported by lemmy2opml.py itself, which will then subscribe the given user to the relevant communities.

Download and run

lemmy2opml is a single Python script. It should run on Python 3.9 or higher. It requires the following Python libraries to be installed:

• opyml for OPML file handling
• requests for making requests to the Lemmy API

To download and run lemmy2opml:

git clone https://github.com/bunburya/lemmy2opml.git
cd lemmy2opml
python ./lemmy2opml.py

Basic usage

Export

To export a user's subscribed communities, basic usage is as follows:

lemmy2opml.py export <instance_URL> <username> <output_file>

Where:

• <instance_URL> is the URL for the Lemmy instance where you have an account, eg, lemmy.ml or https://programming.dev.
• <username> is your username on that instance.
• <output_file> is where you want the resulting OPML file to be saved.

For example:

lemmy2opml.py export --categories --title "Example OPML file" --include-date programming.dev bba example.opml

will produce an OPML file similar to example.opml, containing the communities subscribed to by user bba on the programming.dev instance.

Import

To subscribe a user to a list of Lemmy communities contained in an OPML file, basic usage is:

lemmy2opml.py <instance_URL> <username> import <input_file>

Where <input_file> is the path to the OPML file you want to import.

lemmy2opml will wait about half a second between each subscription request, as Lemmy's API is rate-limited. Therefore, subscribing to a large number of communities can take a bit of time. By default, lemmy2opml is silent unless it encounters some issue; if you want more feedback, you can pass the --debug argument for more verbose logging.

For example:

lemmy2opml.py import programming.dev bba example.opml

will subscribe user bba on instance programming.dev to each of the communities listed in the OPML file at example.opml (assuming they are all reachable and federated with the user's instance, etc).

Authentication

You need to provide your password so that lemmy2opml can get your subscribed communities or subscribe you to new ones. Always be careful when providing your password to third party software, and note you do so at your own risk. You can view the source code of lemmy2opml.py to see exactly what it does with your password.

By default, lemmy2opml will ask you to provide your password in the terminal (your input will be hidden from view). Alternatively, you can provide your password as a separate command line argument (--password), or you can store your password in a file and pass the path to that file as a command line argument (--pass-file). Make sure to pass these before import or export on the command line.

Customisation

You can customise lemmy2opml's behaviour using a number of optional command line arguments. For further information on available command line arguments run:

• lemmy2opml.py -h
• lemmy2opml.py export -h
• lemmy2opml.py import -h

Development

lemmy2opml is written in Python and published under the MIT licence. I have only done some light testing so if you do encounter any bugs or other issues please file an issue with as much information as possible.