XBEL
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| XBEL | |
|---|---|
| Name | XBEL |
| Extension | .xbel |
| Mime | application/xbel+xml |
| Owner | Python Software Foundation |
| Type | XML-based bookmark exchange |
| Released | 1998 |
| Standard | draft |
XBEL
XBEL is an XML-based file format designed for exchanging and storing bookmark and web-surfing metadata between applications and across platforms. It provides a lightweight hierarchical model for describing bookmarks, folders, and annotations, intended to be machine-readable and portable among desktop and server-side software. XBEL has been referenced in discussions of interoperability among web browsers, desktop environments, and archival tools.
Overview
XBEL was created to address interoperability among applications that manage web bookmarks and collections, enabling tools such as Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Konqueror, GNOME, and KDE to import and export bookmark hierarchies without loss of structure. The format uses XML namespaces and elements to represent folders, bookmarks, annotations, and metadata, allowing converters and synchronizers—such as rsync, Unison-based workflows or Dropbox integrations—to preserve user-curated links across devices like Linux, Windows, and macOS installations. XBEL is referenced in documentation for applications including Lynx, Epiphany, SeaMonkey, and various bookmark manager utilities.
History
XBEL originated in the late 1990s as part of efforts by internet and open-source communities to standardize bookmark interchange during the rise of graphical browsers and desktop environments. Early contributors included developers associated with Mozilla Foundation, the Python Software Foundation, and participants from desktop projects such as GNOME Project and KDE Community. The format was discussed alongside contemporaneous standards like RSS, OPML, and XHTML to enable syndication and structured data exchange. Over time, browser vendors such as Opera and Microsoft Internet Explorer focused on proprietary or HTML-based bookmark formats, while open-source projects continued to reference XBEL in import/export tools and synchronization services like Pocket and Delicious-related utilities.
Format and syntax
XBEL is an XML dialect with a defined element vocabulary for hierarchical bookmarks. Core elements mirror concepts used in applications such as Netscape Bookmark File Format and include constructs analogous to the folder and bookmark models seen in Mozilla Firefox and Opera, but expressed in XML. Typical XBEL documents declare an XML prolog and a namespace, and use elements for folders, bookmarks, separators, and metadata. The syntax supports attributes that reference resources and timestamps similar to constructs used in Dublin Core metadata and interoperable schemas employed by W3C initiatives. Parsers for XBEL can be implemented with libraries from ecosystems including libxml2, Expat, ElementTree (Python), and SAX.
Features and extensions
XBEL supports hierarchical organization, annotations, bookmark aliases, and metadata fields that map to properties used by tools such as Evernote, OneNote, and Google Bookmarks-style services. Extensions have been proposed and implemented to include tags, favicon references, last-visited timestamps, and synchronization tokens compatible with services like CalDAV-adjacent sync frameworks or WebDAV storage. Projects have adapted XBEL to interoperate with SQLite-backed bookmark stores and to export to formats used by Pandoc converters and static-site generators like Jekyll. The format’s simplicity allows embedding additional namespaces for richer metadata drawn from vocabularies such as FOAF, Schema.org, and PRISM.
Implementations and software support
Support for XBEL exists in a variety of applications and libraries across operating systems. Desktop environments and browsers such as GNOME, KDE, Mozilla Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey include import/export utilities or plugins. Command-line and scripting support is available through tools and libraries in the Python (programming language), Perl, Ruby, and Java ecosystems, leveraging parsers such as lxml and SAX. Backup, synchronization, and conversion utilities integrate XBEL to interoperate with services like Nextcloud, ownCloud, and cloud storage providers, while archival and digital-preservation projects use XBEL as an exchange format alongside MARC, EAD, and other metadata standards.
Example XBEL document
Category:Computer file formats