Importing a Sitemap XML into Google Sheets

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The Goal

In the following short article, we want to import data from an existing sitemap XML file into a new Google Sheet document.

The sheet must pull the sitemap via HTTP protocol and extract all the URLs from the sitemap and insert them. into the sheet.

Now let’s implement it .. it only takes 1 minute …

For demonstration purpose, I’m going to use the sitemap from my old blog, to be found at https://www.hascode.com/sitemap.xml.

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Use the XMLIMPORT function

The syntax is XMLIMPORT("url", "xpath")

e.g. for importing an XML sitemap

=IMPORTXML("https://www.hascode.com/sitemap.xml", "//\*[local-name()='url']/*[local-name()='loc']")

=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW()-1,COLUMN())

Each empty cell is a todo, each filled cell is done.

That allows us the following output, that counts all preceding cells of each type:

="Done: "&(COUNTA(B3:INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW()-1,COLUMN())))&" Todo: " &COUNTIF(B3:INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW()-1,COLUMN())),""))

This outputs a label like "Done: 35 Todo: 142"