Scripted Re-Mark

This service helps you manage your bookmarks stored on popular social bookmarking site del.icio.us. If you've ever wanted to make edits to all your bookmarks in one hit ("batch mode"), then this is for you. It makes it easy to re-tag bookmarks en masse, make wholesale changes to URLs or update descriptions in bulk. You can also toggle public/private sharing settings and mass delete bookmarks.

*** EDIT August 2008 ***

Please note that this service now works with the new delicious.com site. If there are lingering problems with your setup, please get in touch.


Following the steps, you'll build, test and apply a set of rules to select bookmarks. Feel free to read about possible uses, see some examples and pick up some tips on our Help page.

NEW! Now with functions-as-parameters, tag stemming and "touched tag" for multi-stage processing of bookmarks.

1: Enter Details

Please provide your del.icio.us username. (This is used to help you test your rules before applying them.)

UsernameFilter Tags

2: Build Rules

Create as many search/replace rules as you wish below. Field refers to the bookmark field to edit. Search is the string to match. Replace is the string that will be swapped in. Case is whether to ignore case, or it should be case-sensitive. Match determines whether it finds all matches in the string, or the first occurrence only.

NB: You can use Search and Replace as regular expressions (regexp). If you're really game, you can use functions in the Replace string. The "Tag Tidy" button will find and merge lexically similar tags for you.

FieldSearchReplaceCaseMatchMode







       

(Percentages are estimates only, as only your first 100 bookmarks are tested.) You can also modify your bookmark sharing settings in one fell swoop. To use this feature, please ensure that your enable private saving in your delicious account. This rule operates on all visible bookmarks. You can set them all Private or Public or leave them untouched. You can also Toggle the present setting, so that bookmarks currently Private become Public, and vice versa.

Bookmark Sharing:
No Change Set Private Set Public Toggle Setting

Now, you have the option of adding a special "touched" tag to all bookmarks that have either been updated by the above rules, or just match a search/replace rule. (If a bookmark is untouched by any rules and doesn't match anything, the tag is not added.) This is handy if you want to review edits or for two-stage processing of bookmarks.

Touched Tag:


If you would like to clean up your tags, you can try the Magical Tag Tidy Button to rationalise them. This will populate your edit rules based on Porter Stemming (ie removing the suffixes from common English words). When similar tags are detected, you can choose to replace them with the most common tag, or the shortest tag.

Stemming:
Frequency Brevity

3: Test Rules

Before applying the rules, it's a good idea to test that they actually have the desired effect. Here, you can check your original (left) versus transformed (right) bookmarks, for the first 100 bookmarks. Use the left and right arrows to scroll through your bookmarks. (Private bookmarks are not shown.) Please note that changes you see here are not reflected on your delicious account yet.

FieldOriginal BookmarkTransformed Bookmark
Title
URL
Notes
Tags

4: Apply Rules

The final step is applying the rules to your del.icio.us account. In another window, please open your bookmarks page and ensure that only entries you want to edit/delete are visible. You can do this through selecting tags and controlling the number of entries to list. All entries visible will be updated. (Remember to backup your bookmarks first!) Note that del.icio.us has a maximum of 100 items per page; if you wish to update more than that you will need to repeat this procedure for each pagefull.

To prevent abuse, del.icio.us has a "rate limiter" that will temporarily block your access if you send update requests at too great a speed. To stop this happening, please select a suitable delay between requests. (2-5 seconds is usually sufficient.)

Delay:  

Now, select and copy the text below (ctrl-c). Go to your del.icio.us window and paste (ctrl-v) the text into the browser address bar and press enter. This will apply your rules to your bookmarks.

Code:  

Deletion: If you're looking to delete a set of bookmarks at this point, please note that all bookmarks visible on the target will be permanently deleted. (If you want to be selective, we suggest you use the "touched tag" feature to whittle down your set.) These bookmarks will be gone forever. To access the mass delete code, please click here.

If you use GreaseMonkey, you may enjoy Brian Gregory's Bulk Deleting and Sharing Tool, for GreaseMonkey. Check it out.



Comments, feedback, troubleshooting, suggestions and discussions to Freshblog, please.


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