A quick script to convert the XML from Android app "SMS Backup & Restore" into CSV.

sms-backup-to-csv.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# A quick script to convert the XML from Android app "SMS Backup & Restore" into CSV.
#
# Usage: $ ./sms-backup-to-csv.rb < PATH/TO/BACKUP/FILE.xml

require "nokogiri"
require "csv"

# Specify the backup file's attributes and data types.
COLUMNS = { "protocol" => :to_i, "address" => :to_s, "date" => :to_i, "type" => :to_i, "subject" => :to_s, "body" => :to_s, "toa" => :to_i, "sc_toa" => :to_i, "service_center" => :to_s, "read" => :to_i, "status" => :to_i, "locked" => :to_i, "date_sent" => :to_s, "readable_date" => :to_s, "contact_name" => :to_s }
  
# Read backup file from stdin and into Nokogiri.
backup = Nokogiri::XML ARGF.read

# Pluck out just the SMS nodes
messages = backup.css("sms")

# For each message, grab and convert each attribute specified above.
rows = messages.map { |m| COLUMNS.map {|k,v| m.attribute(k).content.method(v).call }}

# Write the data as a CSV to stdout.
CSV do |stdout|
	stdout << COLUMNS.keys
	rows.each {|r| stdout << r }
end

No real experience with Ruby - how would I alter this to write to a file instead of stdout?

With any command line script in Unix, you can redirect stdout to a file, using the > operator. E.g., for this script:

./sms-backup-to-csv.rb < PATH/TO/BACKUP/FILE.xml > my-new-file.csv

Nice!

Could you enhance it to dump out appropriately named and dated MMS objects? eg photos etc?