firefox-bookmarks

Extract information from your Firefox bookmarks

This was built as part of the bookmarks project, GitHub hosted websites for searching through other people's bookmarks.

Getting Started

Install the module with: npm install firefox-bookmarks

// Load in raw bookmarks from Firefox backups
var rawBookmarks = require('~/.mozilla/firefox/profile-id/bookmarkbackups/bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD.json');
/*
{
  "title": "",
  "id": 1,
  "dateAdded": 1364532555307821,
  "lastModified": 1364627167084723,
  "type": "text/x-moz-place-container",
  "root": "placesRoot",
  "children": [
    ...
*/
 
// Simplify and parse raw bookmarks
var BookmarkCollection = require('firefox-bookmarks');
var bookmarks = new BookmarkCollection(rawBookmarks);
 
// Output simplified bookmark info
bookmarks.toJSON();
/*
[
  {
    "type": "folder",
    "title": "web dev code",
    "children": [
      {
        "type": "bookmark",
        "title": "fxn/tkn - Terminal keynote presentation",
        "dateAdded": 1364532709949934,
        "lastModified": 1364532719708073,
        "description": "tkn - Terminal Keynote - A hack for terminal-based talks",
        "uri": "https://github.com/fxn/tkn"
      }, ...
    ]
  }, ...
]
*/

CLI

We also present a command line tool for usage within npm scripts or globally.

$ npm install -g firefox-bookmarks
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/firefox-bookmarks
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/firefox-bookmarks
...
$ firefox-bookmarks flatten ~/.mozilla/firefox/profile-id/bookmarkbackups/bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD.json \
    | underscore print | head
[
  {
    "title": "fxn/tkn - Terminal keynote presentation",
    "dateAdded": 1364532709949934,
    "lastModified": 1364532719708073,
    "description": "tkn - Terminal Keynote - A hack for terminal-based talks",
    "uri": "https://github.com/fxn/tkn"
  },
  {
    "title": "pedalboard.js - Open-source JavaScript framework for developing audio effects for guitars",

Documentation

firefox-bookmarks exposes BookmarkCollection as its module.exports.

new BookmarkCollection(rawBookmarks, options)

Constructor for interpretting a collection of Firefox bookmarks

• rawBookmarks Object[] - Bookmarks saved to ~/.mozilla/firefox/profile-id/bookmarkbackups/
• options Object - Container for flags to affect behavior
  • folders String[] - Array of whitelisted top-level folders to consume
    • If not provided, all folders will be consumed

bookmarks.toJSON()

Export internal bookmark data into simplified structure

Returns:

• retArr Object[] - Array of bookmarks and folders

folder structure:

• type String - Type of element (folders use folder)
• title String - Name of the folder
• children Object[] - Array of more folders and bookmarks

bookmark structure:

• type String - Type of element (bookmarks use bookmark)
• title String - Name of the folder
• uri String - URL that was saved for the bookmark
• dateAdded Number - Microseconds (milliseconds/1000) since Linux epoch that bookmark was added
• lastModified Number - Microseconds since Linux epoch that bookmark was last updated
• description String - Description if there was one provided

bookmarks.flatten()

Export compresses set of bookmark data. All folders are thrown out and all bookmarks are put into one array.

Returns:

• retArr Object[] - Array of bookmarks
  • To save space, type is stripped from all bookmarks. Otherwise, these are the same as those in bookmarks.toJSON()

CLI

firefox-bookmarks installs a firefox-bookmarks executable. Options can be found via --help.

CLI flags (e.g. folders) are passed in as options that are passed in to the BookmarkCollection constructor.

$ firefox-bookmarks --help
 
  Usage: firefox-bookmarks [options] [command]
 
  Commands:
 
    to-json [filepath]     Parse a bookmarks file into simplified JSON
    flatten [filepath]     Flatten a bookmarks file into simplified bookmarks
 
  Options:
 
    -h, --help     output usage information
    -V, --version  output the version number
 

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint via grunt and test via npm test.

Donating

Support this project and others by twolfson via gittip.

Unlicense

As of Jan 21 2014, Todd Wolfson has released this repository and its contents to the public domain.

It has been released under the UNLICENSE.