Mozilla Firefox 3 History File Format

Starting in Firefox 3, a new file format was used to record browser history information. Rather than storing this information in a flat file using the mork file format (as was done in previous versions of Firefox), the information is kept in sqlite tables within a file.

File Locations

On linux systems, the history file is located in the users home folder in the .mozilla/firefox/<profile folder>/ folder and is named places.sqlite. On Windows systems, the history file is located in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\firefox\Profiles\<profile folder> and is named places.sqlite.

Database Tables

The places.sqlite file is essentially a database with multiple tables:

  moz_bookmarks
  moz_bookmarks_itemindex
  moz_bookmarks_parentindex
  moz_bookmarks_roots
  moz_keywords
  moz_favicons (actually stored the favicons in a BLOB within the table)
  moz_annos
  moz_annos_placeattributeindex
  moz_attributes
  moz_items_annos
  moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex
  moz_places (See Below)
  moz_places_url_uniqueindex
  moz_places_faviconindex
  moz_places_hostindex
  moz_places_visitcount
  moz_places_frequencyindex
  moz_historyvists (See Below)
  moz_historyvists_placedateindex
  moz_historyvists_fromindex
  moz_historyvists_dateindex
  moz_inputhistory
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_roots_1
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1
  sqlite_sequence
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_favicons_1
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1
  sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1

moz_places

The moz_places table holds some of the information necessary to reconstruct the browser history.

  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY
  url LONGVARCHAR (The whole URL string)
  title LONGVARCHAR (The title presented from the TITLE tags on the page)
  rev_host LONGVARCHAR (this is the host name from the URL in reverse)
  visit_count INTEGER
  hidden INTEGER
  typed INTEGER
  favicon_id INTEGER
  frequency INTEGER

moz_historyvisits

The moz_historyvisits table holds the other information that you need to link up with moz_places to reconstruct the browser history.

  id INTEGER
  from_visit INTEGER
  place_id INTEGER
  visit_date INTEGER 
  visit_time INTEGER
  session INTEGER