Track the visited url's in mozilla

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usharani
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Joined: November 11th, 2008, 6:02 am

Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by usharani »

Hi,

I Want the list of url's visited in mozilla browser, but i am unable to get the solution for this. I tried a lot. This is an important task for my project once i got the solution for this i can proceed further in my project. So please help me by providing an example if anyone know the solution.

Thanks in Advance.
teoli2003
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by teoli2003 »

Ctrl-Shift-H
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Bluefang
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by Bluefang »

What are you trying to do? Are you writing a web page or an extension?
There have always been ghosts in the machine... random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul...
usharani
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by usharani »

Hi, I want to retrieve the url's list using C# code not from the browser. I am developing the windows application in which this is the major task.So please help me by posting the answers. Thanks
teoli2003
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by teoli2003 »

Just implement sqlite for C# and acess to the places.sqlite file (Firefox being closed of course).
usharani
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by usharani »

but here i am not going to use sqlite or any other databases. I have to track the url from mozilla browser when url enterd into the browser address bar. and i have to store all the url's in xml file SO please help. Thanks
teoli2003
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by teoli2003 »

You cannot do that by using C#.

You have to do that by writing an extension in Javascript.
usharani
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by usharani »

is there any other way to do the process. because i am doing a windows application where we cannot intregrate javascript. Please help. ThankYou
Racer
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by Racer »

All Firefox extensions are written in Javascript (and C++ if necessary). There is no simple alternative. I suppose you could try recompiling one of the Firefox dlls for your own purposes. However, that uses C++. Also, you will probably get no help because nobody does it because it is 100x easier to do an extension. Take a look at https://developer.mozilla.org

Note that the Javascript used in an extension has access to all of the underlying Firefox APIs. So, you can write to file, to a socket, a named pipe, or just about anything else you would want. Presumably, your C# code could be listening on the named pipe and take whatever action you please.
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Bluefang
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by Bluefang »

No, there is not way to monitor the activities of Firefox from an external application (at least not that I know of or in the ways that you want). That would be a security risk and privacy violation.

Potentially, you could be able to write your program to work as a proxy, and put it between Firefox and the internet. Or you could potentially write an extension that listens to URL changes, and sends signals to an external program via some sort of socket (be it a file, pipe, other IPC, or as a HTTP request to a local server).

But however you do it, you'll need to write something in Firefox that actively reports data to an external location.
There have always been ghosts in the machine... random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul...
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monkey912
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by monkey912 »

teoli2003 gave the solution that works best.
monkey
usharani
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by usharani »

Hi ,
Anyways using javascript able to track the browsed url's and history of mozilla browser. So please help by providing some sample code. Thanks
Racer
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by Racer »

Take a look at https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Code_s ... _Listeners

As for writing to named pipes (or other external applications), you will need to ask in Extension Development. Actually, this whole thread should be moved there.
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steviex
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by steviex »

Moving to Extension Development......
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Please DO NOT PM me for support... Lets keep it on the board, so we can all learn.
Swifteh
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Re: Track the visited url's in mozilla

Post by Swifteh »

Okay, this is totally possible in C# without touching any JS. It took a while (mainly figuring out how to convert the damn TimeStamp) and it will require you to use the SQLite C# wrapper. Once you have added your reference to the SQLite wrapper you can use the following code:

Code: Select all

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SQLite;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Security.Principal;

class FFHistory
{
  public static Dictionary<string, HistoryEntry> GetURLCache()
  {
    try
    {
      // History List
      Dictionary<string, HistoryEntry> list = new Dictionary<string, HistoryEntry>();

      // Get Current Users App Data
      string documentsFolder = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);

      // Move to Firefox Data
      documentsFolder += "\\Mozilla\\Firefox\\Profiles\\";

      // Check if directory exists
      if (Directory.Exists(documentsFolder))
      {
        // Loop each Firefox Profile
        foreach (string folder in Directory.GetDirectories(documentsFolder))
        {
          // Fetch Profile History
          ExtractUserHistory(ref list, folder);
        }
      }

      return list;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
      Trace.WriteLine("ERROR: FFHistory.GetURLCache() (" + ex.Message + ")");
      Trace.Flush();

      return null; ;
    }
  }

  // Fetch User History
  private static void ExtractUserHistory(ref Dictionary<string, HistoryEntry> list, string folder)
  {
    try
    {
      // Get User history info
      DataTable historyDT = ExtractFromTable("moz_places", folder);

      // Get vist Time/Data info
      DataTable visitsDT = ExtractFromTable("moz_historyvisits", folder);

      // Get current User
      string currUser = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name;
      currUser = currUser.Substring(currUser.IndexOf("\\") + 1);

      // Loop each history entry
      foreach (DataRow row in historyDT.Rows)
      {
        // Select entry Date from visits
        var entryDate = (from dates in visitsDT.AsEnumerable()
                        where dates["place_id"].ToString() == row["id"].ToString()
                       select dates).LastOrDefault();

        // If history entry has date
        if (entryDate != null)
        {
          string url = row["Url"].ToString();

          // Create new Entry
          HistoryEntry entry = new HistoryEntry();
          {
            entry.Url = url;
            entry.User = currUser;
            entry.LastAccessDate = ConvertFFStrToDate(entryDate["visit_date"].ToString());
          }

          //Add entry to list
          list.Add(url, entry);
        }
      }
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
      Trace.WriteLine("ERROR: FFHistory.ExtractUserHistory() (" + ex.Message + ")");
      Trace.Flush();
    }
  }

  private static string ConvertFFStrToDate(string ffDate)
  {
    try
    {
      // Divide by 1e6 to convert from microseconds to seconds
      long dt = Convert.ToInt64(ffDate) / (long)1e6;

      // Create new base DateTime format
      DateTime dtd = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0);

      // Convert from UTC
      dtd = dtd.AddSeconds((double)dt).AddHours(10);

      // Return DateTime
      return dtd.ToString();
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
      Trace.WriteLine("ERROR: FFHistory.ConvertFFStrToDate() (" + ex.Message + ")");
      Trace.Flush();

      return string.Empty;
    }
  }

  // Extract from places.sqlite (Mozzila history data)
  private static DataTable ExtractFromTable(string table, string folder)
  {
    try
    {
      SQLiteConnection sql_con;
      SQLiteCommand sql_cmd;
      SQLiteDataAdapter DB;
      DataTable DT = new DataTable();

      // FireFix database file
      string dbPath = folder + "\\places.sqlite";

      // If file exists
      if (File.Exists(dbPath))
      {
        // Data connection
        sql_con = new SQLiteConnection("Data Source=" + dbPath + ";Version=3;New=False;Compress=True;");

        // Open the Conn
        sql_con.Open();
        sql_cmd = sql_con.CreateCommand();

        // Select Query
        string CommandText = "select * from " + table;

        // Populate Data Table
        DB = new SQLiteDataAdapter(CommandText, sql_con);
        DB.Fill(DT);

        // Clean up
        sql_con.Close();
      }

      return DT;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
      Trace.WriteLine("ERROR: FFHistory.ExtractFromTable() (" + ex.Message + ")");
      Trace.Flush();

      // Return empty DT if fails
      return new DataTable();
    }
  }
}
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