Any way to export Firefox bookmarks to a database?

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For a long time, I’ve been keeping a special set of bookmarks in Firefox that I shared. I would regularly export all bookmarks to an HTML file, open that in Word to remove all but those in the bookmarks section that I wanted, then save it back to an HTML file. In recent editions of Firefox, however, my older copy of Word only opens the file as a text file. If I use Libre Office Word to do the editing, the resulting formatting is unacceptable in Firefox, although it looks fine in both Chrome and IE. In Firefox, I see extra lines in the wrong place, description paragraphs without indents. Attempting to play with the styles created within the imported file has proven to be just as much a mess (and I definitely don’t want to strip out the formatting and redo it every time I do this).

So…is there any relatively straightforward utility that could be used to extract the key pieces of an exported bookmarks file to a database or parsable text file? By “key” I mean: Link, description, tags, keywords and bookmark folder name. The only true goal here is to find the easiest way to maintain a list of links and distribute it to others.

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What I have done is a Backup, Export to HTML file then share that file. It’s like a Web page and can open in my Browsers and the links are clickable.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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Hello, imjcarls and Berton.

The answer to your question is probably No. One alternative solution would be to maintain your collection of links as an HTML document directly, rather than as bookmarks in your browser. Update that document manually, share it, bookmark it in your browser. For example:

Code:

  
  
  
  
  
  

  
    body{font-family:Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:1.4em;color:#333;background-color:White;}
  




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Updated on March 02, 2015

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I should have added that if you want to try this, copy the code, paste it into Notepad, modify it, save it with a file name extension of .htm or .html. Thereafter, maintain the file in Notepad (or any other text editor or HTML editor).

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What I have done is a Backup, Export to HTML file then share that file. It’s like a Web page and can open in my Browsers and the links are clickable.

That is essentially what I’ve done, but Firefox (unless I have not stumbled upon it) doesn’t have a way to limit the export to just a certain section of one’s bookmarks. So I have to open the exported file and remove a large number of bookmarks that I don’t need or want to share.

However, between your reply and that of iTobaman, it occurred to me that I could open the exported file in Notepad and edit out everything that was not the header and the section of links I want. That worked and now Firefox also opens the page with the correct formatting. The only other challenge left is to get the whole thing to have a right margin instead of spreading across today’s wider screens, but I think I’ll need to put it all in a table to do that.

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A couple more ideas, just for fun:

1. Internet Explorer can export single folders of Favorites to HTML. Export your Firefox bookmarks to Internet Explorer, then in Internet Explorer export your critical folder to HTML.

2. Google Firefox export bookmarks folder to html. You will find a convoluted method of exporting a single folder.

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The only other challenge left is to get the whole thing to have a right margin instead of spreading across today’s wider screens, but I think I’ll need to put it all in a table to do that.

Web gurus would probably use CSS.

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Thanks! That would make a lot of sense if I was starting from scratch. Plus, although it would be easy enough in Notepad, I could also start with a clean word-processor document that was then exported to HTML (which would make it easier to put it all in a table so that wide-screen browsers did not stretch the descriptions to a hard-to-read width). My bigger problem is the current document, which runs to 65 pages when opened in a word-processor, and needs to be transferred. I’ve looked at the structure of the exported bookmarks and could write something to parse out the pieces I want, but I was hoping someone had beaten me to it.

[Addendum] After years of easily opening the file in Word and seeing the formatted rendering, your reply eventually sunk into my brain and I realized I could open the exported file in Notepad directly to slice out the unwanted content. Thanks again…

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