32

Is there a first party (or third party?) way to export just my data out of Stack Overflow?

I realize there's a massive Creative Commons data dump. I'm interested in knowing if there's a quick and easy way for me to get my posts dumped out in some plain text file format for easy personal archiving.

Improve this question
8
  • 2
    Bur doesn't the data dump allow you quite simply to query only your data? And it has loads of export options...
    – NikiC
    Commented Feb 1, 2011 at 11:47
  • 1
    What do you define as 'data'? Questions and answers obviously, but comments, votes, user profile info, too? Some of your data is simply not available because private user data is not exposed through the public channels that are offered.
    – Jon Seigel
    Commented Apr 2, 2011 at 12:00
  • 1
    That sounds like it could become awfully 'expensive' in terms of resource consumption on the DB servers.
    – user50049
    Commented Apr 2, 2011 at 14:51
  • 1
    Do you mean like Facebook allow you to do? For the un-initated, Facebook allow you to do an offline export of your profile, which gives you your profile, history, photos, and virtually everything attached to your profile.
    – Mark Henderson
    Commented Apr 3, 2011 at 10:59
  • 2
    If anyone is still interested in this, I could put together a query if you give some specifics of what should be included...
    – ashleedawg
    Commented May 4, 2018 at 19:26
  • @ashleedawg I think it would be awesome to have a PHP script that accepts an array of StackExchange sites as arguments and then outputs all of my questions, answers, and comments (including the body of the text, the tags, the IDs, the URLs, etc) into JSON.
    – Ryan
    Commented May 6, 2018 at 22:13
  • I just found this Data Explorer tool that is pretty fast and helpful. data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/revision/848322/1047444/…
    – Ryan
    Commented May 6, 2018 at 22:45
  • I finally coded the PHP project I was hoping for. Answer below: meta.stackexchange.com/a/315243/189207
    – Ryan
    Commented Sep 8, 2018 at 16:01

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
15

How about a query on data explorer?

select * from posts where owneruserid=4668;​
Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    It seems only my own post can be exported. How to export the replies as well?
    – smwikipedia
    Commented Jan 23, 2017 at 16:07
8

Free, open-source Laravel (PHP) Stack Exchange data exporter

I finally coded it and released it as a Composer package for Laravel on Github.

This is the first time I've ever created an open-source package, so I'd LOVE to hear if this ends up being useful for anyone.

It exports JSON files of your activity across all of your Stack Exchange sites, such as:

enter image description here

Improve this answer
3
  • This looks really good, is there a demo so I can see the end result webpage? I assume it's got a frontend
    – Jonathan
    Commented May 7, 2019 at 0:05
  • 1
    @Jonathan It's been really helpful for me personally not just for knowing that all my StackExchange "work" is backed up but more for being able to quickly search the folder of JSON files for text phrases to find activity of mine where I can only vaguely remember what I'd said. There is no web front end. You just run php artisan exportStackExchange in the console.
    – Ryan
    Commented May 7, 2019 at 12:41
  • would you be open to collaborating to make a front end? I would be interested
    – Jonathan
    Commented May 8, 2019 at 17:27
1

No, currently there's only the data dump.

However, there might be a Stack App that will grab all your activity from SO and put it in a printer friendly format.

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    For that, you'd have to define 'my activity' too: all my comments out of context isn't much use :)
    – Benjol
    Commented Mar 3, 2011 at 10:49
  • Even if they are most excellent comments, (I hasten to add)
    – Benjol
    Commented Mar 3, 2011 at 10:50

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .