In Firefox: How to Delete All Cookies, Except a Defined Group Held in an Array?

[Zohar]

Hi

Browsers tend to accumulate a lot of cookies,
90% of them are from Ad sites.

I would like to create an array with a defined group of sites that I wish their cookies not to be deleted,
and then write a script that deletes all cookies except ones defined in that array.

Doing it via Firefox's GUI seems problematic and fragile..
Is there maybe a programmatic way to do it?

Thank you

Edited August 12, 2018 by Zohar

[TheXman]

 

That functionality is already built into Firefox.  There's no fragility in its implementation.  It works quite well.

 

[Zohar]

Hi TheXman

The interface you got looks different than mine.

When I go to the Privacy tab, I only have "Remove Individual Cookies".

I am using Windows XP SP3, and Firefox 52.9.0 (the latest, and probably the last version released for XP)

[TheXman]

The same functionality that I have referenced above existed in FF v52 and long before that, just in a different place in the Options dialogs.  Unfortunately, I don't have an XP VM to show you where it exists.  If I recall, it is on the Privacy section in v52.

[Zohar]

Well you are right

There is a field:
"Firefox will:", and then it has a Combobox.
Initially the Combobox's value is "Remember history".

If you click that Combobox and choose "Use custom settings for history",
then the "Exceptions..." button appears  (right after the "Accept cookies from sites" label).

This is nice but it has 1 problems:
After you define your list, Firefox does not provide you any way to export/import it.

So if you want to format your PC, or use Firefox on more than one computer,
you will have to manually replicate it again on each computer.

With a script tho, it will be much easier to reproduce on any needed computer/after formatting.

So I would really like a programmatic way to do it,
If someone knows how..

Edited August 13, 2018 by Zohar

[mikell]

Hi
I run the same Firefox version (52.9.0) and I use a small extension named "selective cookie delete" (though a better name would be "selective cookie keep") 
The list of the cookies to keep can be seen in about:config on the line 'selectivecookiedelete.cookiestokeep' and can be easily extracted from the Firefox "prefs.js" file, line : user_pref("selectivecookiedelete.cookiestokeep", "www.autoitscript.com, www.autoitscript.fr");

I assume that there are still many extensions like this, long time ago I chose this one among many others

 

 

[Zohar]

Hi mikell

Thank you very much.

Nice to know such thing exists.

But since the work to create such a thing should not be big,
I would like to write a small script myself that does it, instead of installing any additional (outside) add-on.

If anyone can recommend how to do it programatically, it would be interesting to see.

[Gianni]

hi @Zohar,

never gone into this matter, but I suppose that, since firefox cookies are stored into an sqlite file called cookies.sqlite, you culd try to use some sql queryes to manage that archive...

if you type about:support in the firefox address bar, you can see among aother infos, where is located that file (see the profile folder path).

Edited August 13, 2018 by Chimp

[mikell]

A start point...

#include <SQLite.au3>
#include <Array.au3>

$db = "C:\Documents and Settings\mikell\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*****.default\cookies.sqlite"

_SQLite_Startup()
_SQLite_Open($db)
 
Local $array
_SQLite_GetTable2d (-1, "SELECT * FROM moz_cookies;", $array, 0, 0)
  _ArrayDisplay($array)

_SQLite_Close()
_SQLite_Shutdown()

 

[Zohar]

20 hours ago, Chimp said:

hi @Zohar,

never gone into this matter, but I suppose that, since firefox cookies are stored into an sqlite file called cookies.sqlite, you culd try to use some sql queryes to manage that archive...

if you type about:support in the firefox address bar, you can see among aother infos, where is located that file (see the profile folder path).

That's terrific..

I found it thanks to your good pointing to it,
and opened it with "SQLite Expert Personal", which I was recommended about by people here in the past

It has a very simple structure..

I will definitely prefer this route,
but I want to ask another thing:

Changing the DB will be very easy (programmatically), but is a bit intrusive towards Firefox.
It might cause it problems, if it keeps the # of rows for example, in another place.. and expects to find that # of rows, the next time it is run.

Maybe Firefox provides an API to do it?
That way we don't bypass it, and don't have any potential to create any problems..

Also thank you mikell for the starting code

Edited August 14, 2018 by Zohar

[Zohar]

OK I guess I'll take the risk and work directly with the cookies DB..

[jchd]

Using SQLite Expert it's very easy to copy the relevant table into a new one in the same database, say you name it saved_moz_cookies. Then you can work on moz_cookies and if anything turns bad when FF is relaunched, you can still go back and restore the old cookies table.

Note: I sometimes do this for myself, directly in original moz_cookies table using the SQL tab in Expert. Never had any issue, thanks to the formidable stability, portability and backward compatibiliy of SQLite. Your copy of FF running in your own smartphone or tablet also comes with an SQLite DB, 100% PC-compatible regardless of the HW/SW platform running it.

[Zohar]

It's great to hear that it's possible to change it and FF is not interfered by it..
I will use this method then..

Thank you very much all

And thank you Chimp for the great idea