How do I use Firefox cookies with Wget?

Question

wget --load-cookies will load cookies as a "textual file in the format originally used by Netscape's cookies.txt file". However, Firefox keeps its cookies in an SQLite database.

Is there a way to extract the "Netscape's cookies.txt file" from the Firefox cookies.sqlite file?

Answer 1

There are cookie exporter extensions that you can use to export a cookie.txt format file that can be used with wget.

Alternatively, you can create your own. Cookies are viewable in Options / Privacy / remove individual cookies. You can find the cookie you are after and create a .txt file containing the information:

domain - The domain that created AND that can read the variable. 
flag - A TRUE/FALSE value indicating if all machines within a given domain can access the variable.  Say "true" 
path - The path within the domain that the variable is valid for.  Use / for any url
secure - A TRUE/FALSE value indicating if a secure connection with the domain is needed to access the variable. Use false to allow http://
expiration - The UNIX time that the variable will expire on.  Set something far in the future
name - The name of the variable. 
value - The value of the variable.

So one might look like this for example:

.domain.com TRUE  / FALSE 4102358400 SESSIONID dfjdfkjsjwere090fusfdkljf

Answer 2

If you're using wget, you are probably comfortable from the command line. In that case, instead of a Firefox extension, you can use a simple shell script:

extract_cookies.sh > mycookies.txt
wget --load-cookies mycookies.txt examplehost.com

You can download the extract_cookies.sh script from https://gist.github.com/hackerb9/d382e09683a52dcac492ebcdaf1b79af or cut and paste the following:

#!/bin/sh -e
# extract_cookies.sh:
#
# Convert from Firefox's cookies.sqlite format to Netscape cookies,
# which can then be used by wget and curl. (Why don't wget and curl
# just use libsqlite if it's installed? Mysteries abound.)

# USAGE:
#
# $ extract_cookies.sh > /tmp/cookies.txt
# or
# $ extract_cookies.sh ~/.mozilla/firefox/*default*/cookies.sqlite > /tmp/cookies.txt

# USING WITH WGET:
# $ wget --load-cookies=/tmp/cookies.txt http://example.com

# USING WITH CURL:
# $ curl --cookie /tmp/cookies.txt http://example.com

# Note: If you do not specify an SQLite filename, this script will
# intelligently find it for you.
#
# A) Usually it will check all profiles under ~/.mozilla/firefox/ and
# use the cookies.sqlite that was updated most recently.
#
# B) If you've redirected stdin (with < or |) , then that will be used.


# HISTORY: I believe this is circa 2010 from:
# http://slacy.com/blog/2010/02/using-cookies-sqlite-in-wget-or-curl/
# However, that site is down now.

# Cleaned up by Hackerb9 (2017) to be more robust and require less typing.


cleanup() {
    rm -f $TMPFILE
    exit 0
}
trap cleanup  EXIT INT QUIT TERM


if [ "$#" -ge 1 ]; then
    SQLFILE="$1"
else
    if tty -s; then
    SQLFILE=$(ls -t ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/cookies.sqlite | head -1)
    else
    SQLFILE="-"     # Will use 'cat' below to read stdin
    fi
fi

if [ "$SQLFILE" != "-" -a ! -r "$SQLFILE" ]; then
    echo "Error. File $SQLFILE is not readable." >&2
    exit 1
fi

# We have to copy cookies.sqlite, because FireFox has a lock on it
TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/cookies.sqlite.XXXXXXXXXX`
cat "$SQLFILE" >> $TMPFILE


# This is the format of the sqlite database:
# CREATE TABLE moz_cookies (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, value TEXT, host TEXT, path TEXT,expiry INTEGER, lastAccessed INTEGER, isSecure INTEGER, isHttpOnly INTEGER);

echo "# Netscape HTTP Cookie File"
sqlite3 -separator $'\t' $TMPFILE <<- EOF
    .mode tabs
    .header off
    select host,
    case substr(host,1,1)='.' when 0 then 'FALSE' else 'TRUE' end,
    path,
    case isSecure when 0 then 'FALSE' else 'TRUE' end,
    expiry,
    name,
    value
    from moz_cookies;
EOF

cleanup

Answer 3

The way you find the sqlite file doesn't work on most systems.

Also what if you have multiple sqlite files because you have multiple Firefox profiles.

So here's how I do it:

Get all the cookies.sqlite files, sort them by line number and assume the one with the most lines is the one you are actually using the most. Then return the path for that file.

So I changed your line to this:

SQLFILE=$(find ~ -type f -name cookies.sqlite -exec wc -l {} \+ | sort -rn |grep -v total| head -1 |egrep -o "/.*")