Using cookies.sqlite in wget or curl

Newer versions of FireFox use a sqlite3 database to store their cookies.

Older versions of FireFox used a .txt file.  wget and curl know how to parse the older style text file, but not the sqlite3 database.

So, I wrote a quick script to extract the cookies.sqlite database and generate a file that looks just like the old cookies.txt file, and then you can pass that to wget or curl. Here’s the script:

#!/bin/bash

function cleanup {
rm -f $TMPFILE
exit 1
}

trap cleanup  SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM

# 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);

# We have to copy cookies.sqlite, because FireFox has a lock on it
TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/cookies.sqlite.XXXXXXXXXX`
cat $1 >> $TMPFILE
sqlite3 -separator '	' $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

Usage should be like this:

$ extract_cookies.sh $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/*/cookies.sqlite > /tmp/cookies.txt
$ wget --load-cookies=/tmp/cookies.txt http://mysite.com
$ # OR
$ curl --cookie /tmp/cookies.txt http://mysite.com

You could use this script to wrap curl or wget itself in a similar extraction scheme, so that you always get the most current cookie values when you run wget.