Python script to backup up your iPhone SMS messages

Tom Offerman wrote a well documented script for grabbing SMS from your iPhone using its iTunes backup. SMS-backup supports human, JSON, and CSV output options as well as creating phone number aliases to make the results a bit more friendly:

$ sms-backup.py --myname Tom 
                --alias "555-555-1212=Michele" 
                --phone "5555551212" 
                --phone "1112223333" 
                --date-format "%b %d, %Y at %I:%M %p" 
                --format json

[
  {
    "date": "Jan 01, 2010 at 03:31 PM",
    "from": "Tom", 
    "text": "I love donuts!!", 
    "to": "Michele"
  }, 
  {
    "date": "Jan 02, 2010 at 04:17 PM",
    "from": "Michele", 
    "text": "I love a man who loves donuts!!!", 
    "to": "Tom"
  }, 
  {
    "date": "Jan 02, 2010 at 06:00 PM",
    "from": "Tom", 
    "text": "Just checking in...where are you?", 
    "to": "(111) 222-3333"
  }, 
  ...

Sadly, MMS messages are not supported. Check out the README for usage and background.