Editing Firefox 3.6.8 bookmarks & history with Bash 4.1.5 on Ubuntu 10.04 ?

[pwilliams]

Is it possible to edit Firefox bookmarks and or history using the command line or a Bash shell script.

Any examples would be more than appreciated - using the mouse is a pain for deletion;I've searched for relevant files with `locate`and Vim but I'm apprehensive about messing up and losing data.

[sicarie]

I'm sure it is - I'd just google where they were, then perform manipulations on them with vi or bash.

What are you trying to do to the history? What are you trying to do to the bookmarks?

[pwilliams]

Thanks sicarie for your response.
As you know clicking on bookmarks or history in GUI gets
long lists of files,but what I'm looking for is the relevant files in text form, that I can delete or move into directories that I would create.I suspect that some of these files may not be in plain text (I think,for example that emails are in Jason?).

I do have GUI but find text and the command line far

[sicarie]

Well, were you able to find out where that information is stored? As soon as you know that, you can take a look at it and see if it's just lines in a file, or each entry is its own file, etc... and get a better idea about how you want to manipulate it.

[pwilliams]

No success,under mozilla or firefox.
I even tried typing firefox in terminal- just opened firefox window - "url not found" - it all led back to GUI.
Tried /usr....... files No joy!

[sicarie]

I ran a google search and found this - and that first link looked interesting, did you look what's in your profile?

[pwilliams]

I had a good look-very interesting,but it all led back to GUI,the nearest to text was `json`.I think I'll leave it for now;Many thanks for kind help sicarie.

[Nepomuk]

Hi pwilliams!

I just found this thread and thought you might want to know, that
- in Firefox versions up to 2 the bookmarks were saved in a file called bookmarks.html in the Firefox profile and the history was saved in the history.dat file, but
- since Firefox 3 they are both in an SQL file called "places.sqlite", also in the Firefox directory. I'm no SQL expert, but there are ways to edit SQL files by command line (I wouldn't recommend just opening them with an editor though, they're extremely complex if you don't know what you're doing).

So, now that you know, what you're looking for, have fun! ^^

Greetings,
Nepomuk

[pwilliams]

Thanks for the tip Nepomuk,I've had a look at`places.sqlite`;yes,I agree they are best left well alone,for the time being at least.