Export & Backup

Why Backups Matter

Your SparkFeed data (feeds, articles, favorites, and read history) lives in a single SQLite file. It’s important to back this up regularly so you don’t lose your reading history or curated feed list.

Backing Up the Database

The simplest backup is copying the local.db file to another location:

# Windows: copy to Desktop
Copy-Item .\local.db ~\Desktop\sparkfeed-backup-$(Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd").db

# macOS / Linux: copy to home directory
cp local.db ~/backups/sparkfeed-$(date +%Y%m%d).db

Automated backups with a script

On Windows, create a scheduled task. Here is a simple PowerShell script:

# backup-sparkfeed.ps1
$source = "C:\path\to\sparkfeed\local.db"
$dest   = "C:\path\to\backups\sparkfeed-$(Get-Date -Format 'yyyyMMdd-HHmm').db"
Copy-Item $source $dest
Write-Host "Backup created: $dest"

Schedule it with Task Scheduler to run daily.

Restoring from Backup

To restore SparkFeed from a backup:

Stop the dev/production server
Replace local.db with your backup file:
```
cp sparkfeed-20260410.db local.db
```
Restart the server. All your feeds and articles will be restored

OPML Export (Coming Soon)

OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is the standard format for sharing feed lists between RSS readers.

The planned OPML export will produce a file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml version="2.0">
  <head>
    <title>SparkFeed Feeds Export</title>
    <dateCreated>Mon, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 GMT</dateCreated>
  </opml>
  <body>
    <outline text="Technology">
      <outline type="rss" text="CSS-Tricks"
               xmlUrl="https://css-tricks.com/feed/"
               htmlUrl="https://css-tricks.com" />
      <outline type="rss" text="Hacker News"
               xmlUrl="https://hnrss.org/frontpage"
               htmlUrl="https://news.ycombinator.com" />
    </outline>
  </body>
</opml>

This lets you migrate your feed list to any other RSS reader (Feedly, Inoreader, Miniflux, etc.) or share it with someone else.

Article Export (Coming Soon)

A future release will allow you to export:

Format	Contents
JSON	All articles or favorites with full metadata
Markdown	Readable reading list with titles and URLs
CSV	Spreadsheet-compatible export for analysis

What Gets Stored (and What Doesn’t)

Data	Stored in DB	Exportable
Feed list	Yes	Soon (OPML)
Article metadata	Yes	Soon (JSON)
Article content	Yes	Soon (JSON)
Favorites	Yes	Soon (JSON/Markdown)
Read/unread status	Yes	Soon (JSON)
User settings	Yes	Manual (copy DB)
Images	Not cached	N/A