How to access Firefox 3 bookmarks from the command line?

[Yuzem]

On the firefox forums someone told me to use sqlite but it doesn't work.

It tells me that the database is locked:
Error: database is locked
If I close firefox it tells me:
Unable to open database ".mozilla/firefox/adnu2zvf.default/places.sqlite": file is encrypted or is not a database

Here it is the post on mozillazine:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=655853

[aysiu]

In answer to your thread title question:

nano -B ~/.mozilla/firefox/adnu2zvf.default/bookmarks.html

should do it.

What might solve the post problem is:

mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.old
firefox &

[Yuzem]

In answer to your thread title question:

nano -B ~/.mozilla/firefox/adnu2zvf.default/bookmarks.html

should do it.

That is the old bookmark file. I need to access the new bookmarks: places.sqlite (firefox 3)

What might solve the post problem is:

mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.old
firefox &

If I do that I will lose all my bookmarks, extensions and settings and what would be the effect?

[Yuzem]

aysiu: Could you move this thread to the Programming Talk sub forum or I should ask again there?

What I really want to know is how to access firefox3 bookmarks form bash to add support for them to avatar-factory.

I realize that the Programming Talk sub forum is a better place for this question.

Thanks.

[Can+~]

Having the command line interface of sqlite3 (sqlite3 package on synaptic)

sqlite3 places.sqlite

sqlite> .databases
seq  name             file                                                      
----------------------------------------------------------
0    main             /home/canxp/places.sqlite

sqlite> .tables
moz_anno_attributes  moz_favicons         moz_keywords       
moz_annos            moz_historyvisits    moz_places         
moz_bookmarks        moz_inputhistory   
moz_bookmarks_roots  moz_items_annos

sqlite> SELECT * FROM moz_bookmarks

That last one produces a huge output.

Use the sqlite3 module of python, or the one on C, if you need to do something else with this data.

I made a copy of the file on my home folder by the way. Most probably, the error you get is that you're trying to open the database while firefox has a lock on it.

*edit*
Also, there's a little trick with firefox, you can make another account for your testing, open firefox with:

firefox-3.0 -ProfileManager

That will let you create new profiles (that are stored in the .mozilla folder), with that you can test without screwing with important data.

[Yuzem]

Thanks, that worked but I still can't access the database if firefox is running:

Error: database is locked

If a copy places.sqlite to temp dir I still get an error:

Unable to open database "places.sqlite": file is encrypted or is not a database

I don't need to do any advanced thing. I just need to parse all the bookmarks to manipulate them with bash.

Is there a simple command to export the bookmarks to a text format that can be accessed with cat, grep, sed etc...?

[nofrak]

The bookmarks.html file is generated from the places database, so if all you need is to read in the files and parse them that should do it. Otherwise you'll have to go through sqlite3. The database locks when you're using firefox so that firefox can be sure it's stable.

[Zugzwang]

If a copy places.sqlite to temp dir I still get an error:

Unable to open database "places.sqlite": file is encrypted or is not a database

Did you close firefox before trying that? I'm asking because it worked for Can+~. The file itself might be in an unreadable state before the database is closed.

[Yuzem]

But the bookmarks.html file is not updated by firefox.
It gets imported the first time that firefox 3 is executed but when changes are made to the bookmarks it doesn't get updated.

Edit: No, I didn't close firefox. I want to access the bookmarks even if firefox is running like in previous versions.

[mssever]

SQLite3 doesn't permit simultaneous connections. Only one process can have an sqlite database open at a time. So unless you can convince Firefox to close its database (perhaps via an extension?), you can't do what you want.