Read Firefox bookmarks using C#

Question

Using C#, I need to get all Firefox bookmarks for importing them into our database. How can I do this?

I'm aware of the SO question, Read FF 3 bookmarks in Java, but the answers there all seem to revolve around Java database drivers, and I'm not sure that some of those answers aren't Java-specific.

My primary question is, "How can I read Firefox bookmarks in C#?"

Secondary questions: I see \%user profile%\application data\mozilla\firefox\profiles\bookmarkbackups\bookmarks-[date].json files -- can I just parse that? If so, are there any existing parsers for that?

Rhetorical lamenting question: Why can't this be as easy as IE, where I just read the .url files in \%user profile%\favorites? Bah.

Answer 1

Use the SQLite driver for .Net and access the file places.sqlite it can be found at
Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/$this_varies/places.sqlite
on my computer. It should not be hard for you to locate on your target computers.

Edit 1:
Here is a snip of code that prints out urls from the database:

using System.Data.SQLite; // downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/adodotnetsqlite

namespace sqlite_test
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var path_to_db = @"C:\places.sqlite"; // copied here to avoid long path
            SQLiteConnection sqlite_connection = new SQLiteConnection("Data Source=" + path_to_db + ";Version=3;New=True;Compress=True;");

            SQLiteCommand sqlite_command = sqlite_connection.CreateCommand();

            sqlite_connection.Open();

            sqlite_command.CommandText = "select * from moz_places";

            SQLiteDataReader sqlite_datareader = sqlite_command.ExecuteReader();

            while (sqlite_datareader.Read())
            {
                // Prints out the url field from the table:
                System.Console.WriteLine(sqlite_datareader["url"]);
            }
        }
    }
}

Edit 2:
As tip. I really must recommend the SQLite Manager plugin for firefox. It's very useful for working with sqlite databases.

Answer 2

Surely it works the same way as suggested in the Java question, just get the SQLite .NET provider and use that to access the FF database file.

Answer 3

I had to rework this slightly for my project http://www.codertakeout.com. Hope this revision helps clarify a few things thanks to some suggestions from around the web.

using System.Data.SQLite;  // need to install sqlite .net driver

String path_to_db = @"C:\Documents and Settings\Jeff\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\yhwx4xco.default\places.sqlite";
String path_to_temp = System.IO.Path.GetTempFileName();

System.IO.File.Copy(path_to_db, path_to_temp, true);
SQLiteConnection sqlite_connection = new SQLiteConnection("Data Source=" + path_to_temp + ";Version=3;Compress=True;Read Only=True;");

SQLiteCommand sqlite_command = sqlite_connection.CreateCommand();

sqlite_connection.Open();

sqlite_command.CommandText = "SELECT moz_bookmarks.title,moz_places.url FROM moz_bookmarks LEFT JOIN moz_places WHERE moz_bookmarks.fk = moz_places.id AND moz_bookmarks.title != 'null' AND moz_places.url LIKE '%http%';";

SQLiteDataReader sqlite_datareader = sqlite_command.ExecuteReader();

while (sqlite_datareader.Read())
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(sqlite_datareader[1]);
    }
sqlite_connection.Close();
System.IO.File.Delete(path_to_temp);

Answer 4

Visit http://myexps.blogspot.com for the implementation in java.

import java.sql.*;

public class helloWorld {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
      Class.forName("org.sqlite.JDBC");
      Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:sqlite:/home/deepak/.mozilla/firefox/yvf7p20d.default/places.sqlite//");
  if(conn==null)
  {
   System.out.println("ERROR");
  }
  System.out.println(conn.toString());

  Statement stat = conn.createStatement();

  ResultSet rs = stat.executeQuery("select * from moz_bookmarks;");
  while (rs.next()) {
      System.out.println("id = " + rs.getString("id"));
      System.out.println("keyword = " + rs.getString("keyword_id"));
      System.out.println("title = " + rs.getString("title"));
  }
  rs.close();
  conn.close();
  }
}

This will be the java implementation

Answer 5

There's a SQLite driver for .Net. Once you get that working I'd imagine the solution would be the same in both .Net and Java.