Keith Vetter 2014-04-08 : I love Gmail, but my biggest complaint is in managing filters. After many years of usage, I've accumulated dozens of filter rules which are a big jumble. I get confused why some messages show up with an unexpected label while others don't go where I expected them too.
Gmail has very limited support in untangling this mess--even just sorting the list of filters by which label gets applied would be a great help.
Thus, I wrote this tool which converts Gmail's exported xml of the filters into a csv file which you can manipulate in a spreadsheet. You can export the filters from the Gmail->Settings->Filters page.
Usage:
liyang 2015-05-06: Alternatively, you might want to write your filters as an EDSL in another language, and delete/re-import them wholesale. Available options include: Haskell , Ruby , or PHP …
# gmailFilters.tsh -- parses Gmail filters xml and creates a CSV file # you can create xml of gmail filters via Gmail->Setting->Filters->Export # by Keith Vetter 2014-04-08 # package require tdom package require csv set gmail_namespaces { atom "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" apps "http://schemas.google.com/apps/2006" } # These fields describe who to filter and what to do on a match # probably missing some set filterFields { label shouldArchive shouldMarkAsRead shouldTrash shouldNeverSpam shouldAlwaysMarkAsImportant shouldNeverMarkAsImportant from to subject doesNotHaveTheWord hasTheWord } proc ParseFilterFile {gmailFilter} { set fin [open $gmailFilter] set xml [string trim [read $fin]] ; list close $fin dom parse $xml doc $doc selectNodesNamespaces $::gmail_namespaces set root [$doc documentElement] set data {} for {set idx 1} {1} {incr idx} { set csvItems [ParseOneEntry $root $idx] if {$csvItems eq ""} break lappend data $csvItems } unset doc return [CreateCsv $data] } proc ParseOneEntry {root idx} { set idNode [$root selectNodes /*/atom:entry\[$idx\]/atom:id] if {$idNode eq ""} { return {} } set id [[$idNode firstChild] nodeValue] set csvItems [list $id] foreach name $::filterFields { set value [ExtractProperty $root $idx $name] lappend csvItems $value } return $csvItems } proc ExtractProperty {root idx name} { set node [$root selectNodes /*/atom:entry\[$idx\]/apps:property\[@name='$name'\]] set value "" if {[llength $node] == 1} { set value [$node getAttribute value] } return $value } proc CreateCsv {data} { # Sort by label set data [lsort -index 1 -command lsortCommand $data] set csv "[::csv::join [concat id $::filterFields]]\n" foreach datum $data { append csv [::csv::join $datum] "\n" } return $csv } proc lsortCommand {a b} { # Sort empty strings last if {$a eq ""} { return 1} if {$b eq ""} { return -1} return [string compare $a $b] } ################################################################ if {$tcl_interactive && $argc == 0} { set gmailFilter ~/Downloads/mailFilters.xml set argv $gmailFilter return } if {[llength $argv] != 1} { puts stderr "usage: gmailFilter gmail_exported_filter_file" exit 1 } set csv [ParseFilterFile [lindex $argv 0]] puts $csv return