Firefox_script

For some firefox bookmarks I set a keyword. For example is the bookmark for gatweaypundit.com :gp. That allows me to type :gp in the address bar to open gatewaypundit.

I found places.sqlite under the .mozilla folder.

sqlite3 places.sqlite  .tables

I get:

moz_anno_attributes                 moz_keywords
moz_annos                           moz_meta
moz_bookmarks                       moz_origins
moz_bookmarks_deleted               moz_places
moz_historyvisits                   moz_places_extra
moz_historyvisits_extra             moz_places_metadata
moz_inputhistory                    moz_places_metadata_search_queries
moz_items_annos                     moz_previews_tombstones

sqlite3 places.sqlite  "PRAGMA table_info(moz_bookmarks)"

gives me:

0|id|INTEGER|0||1
1|type|INTEGER|0||0
2|fk|INTEGER|0|NULL|0
3|parent|INTEGER|0||0
4|position|INTEGER|0||0
5|title|LONGVARCHAR|0||0
6|keyword_id|INTEGER|0||0
7|folder_type|TEXT|0||0
8|dateAdded|INTEGER|0||0
9|lastModified|INTEGER|0||0
10|guid|TEXT|0||0
11|syncStatus|INTEGER|1|0|0
12|syncChangeCounter|INTEGER|1|1|0

I was thinking of making a really small script that - from terminal - takes a keyword; looks it up in the database and then firefox --new-tab <url>.

My problem is.. I can’t access the database while firefox is running and is using the database. It is locked.

Solution?

Maybe I could access the database in a read-only mode? It seems sqlite can open a database immutable: sqlite3 'file:places.sqlite?immutable=1'

Yep! That works.

Next problem

I don’t want to hard-code the name of the profile-folder.. so: how to get it?

Solution

check ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini

The line: Path=<folder-name> is what to fetch.

# using no gem

def path(file)
  File.foreach(file) {|ln|
    return $1 if (ln[/Name=dev-edition-default/] .. ln[/^Path=(.*$)/]) && $1
  }
end

p (profile = path 'profiles.ini') ? profile : 'no-can-do'

# -----------------


# using inifile

require 'inifile'

file = IniFile.load 'profiles.ini'
file.each_section {|sec|
  p file[sec]['Path'] if file[sec]['Name'] == 'dev-edition-default'
}