📗 Bookmate

An append-only key-value store built on Chrome bookmarks, plus an asychronous stream of Bookmark changes. For NodeJS

./src/demo.js:

  import Bookmate from './index.js';

  console.log(Bookmate);

  const path = Bookmate.tryToFindBookmarksLocation();

  console.log({path});

  Bookmate.mount(path);

  const entries = Bookmate.readdirSync(
    'bookmark_bar', 
    {withFileTypes:true}
  );

  console.log(entries);

Features

Bookmate:

• efficiently observes changes to bookmarks and emits these as an asychronous iterator readable stream
• automatically locates the right Chrome Profile directory in a platform-agnostic way by observing bookmark changes
• is possesed of an fs-like, and simple, NodeJS API: readFileSync, writeFileSync, promisesWatch etc

Get

$ npm i --save bookmate@latest

Demo

import Bookmate from './index.js';

console.log(Bookmate);

const path = Bookmate.tryToFindBookmarksLocation();

console.log({path});

Bookmate.mount(path);

{
  const entries = Bookmate.readdirSync('bookmark_bar', {withFileTypes:true});

  console.log(entries);
}

let entry;
try {
  entry = Bookmate.readFileSync([
    'bookmark_bar',
    'https://www.dia.mil/'
  ], {encoding: 'json'});

  entry.name += " Hello ";
} catch(e) {
  entry = {
    name: "DIA",
    type: "url"
  }
}
console.log({entry});

Bookmate.writeFileSync(['bookmark_bar', 'https://www.dia.mil/'], entry);

{
  const entries = Bookmate.readdirSync('bookmark_bar', {withFileTypes:true});

  console.log(entries);
}

Above creates (if not exists) a bookmark to DIA, and appends "Hello" to its bookmark name (the title) otherwise

API

readFileSync(path[, options])

• path <SerializedPathArray> | <PathArray> | <URL> path to Bookmark URL
• options <Object>
  • encoding <string> | <null> Default: null
• Returns: <string> | <Buffer> | <BookmarkNode>

Returns the contents of the Bookmark at the path.

If the encoding option is 'json' then this function returns a <BookmarkNode>. Otherwise, if the encoding option is specified then this function returns a string, otherwise it returns a buffer.

It cannot be called on a folder. To get the contents of a folder use readdirSync()

readdirSync(path[, options])

• path <SerializedPathArray> | <PathArray>
• options <Object>
  • withFileTypes <boolean> Default: false
• Returns: <string[]> | <BookmarkNode[]>

Reads the contents of the folder.

If options.withFileTypes is set to true, the result will contain <BookmarkNode> objects.

Basic usage

See the demo above

1. Find your Bookmark folder location
2. Mount it
3. Read a top-level bookmark folder
4. Do anything!

A note about path syntax.

You can supply a path in three ways. Here's the code that enumerates that (and I'll explain it below):

  function guardAndNormalizePath(path) {
    if ( isSerializedPath(path) ) {
      return JSON.parse(path);
    } else if ( isArrayPath(path) ) {
      return path;
    } else if ( typeof path === "string" ) {
      if ( isURL(path) ) {
        return [path]; 
      } else if ( ! /https?:/.test(path) ) {
        return path.split('/').filter(seg => seg.length);
      } else {
        throw new SystemError('EINVAL', 
          `Sorry path shorthand ('/' separator syntax)
          can not be used with Bookmark URLs. 
          Please use a path array instead.
          `
        );
      }
    } else {
      throw new SystemError('EINVAL', 
        `Sorry path ${
          path
        } was not in a valid format. Please see the documentation at ${
          LIBRARY_REPO
        }`
      );
    }
  }

You can supply a path as a JSON.stringified string, like:

const musicFolderPath = [
  'bookmark_bar',
  'Music Research'
];

const stringifiedPathArray = JSON.stringify(musicFolderPath);

To refer to the folder "Music Research" in your bookmarks bar. Or

const stringifiedPathArray = JSON.stringify([
  'bookmark_bar',
  'Music Research',
  'https://sheetmusic.com'
]);

To refer to the bookmark with URL https://sheetmusic.com in the same folder.

You can also supply it as simple an array.

Bookmate.readdirSync(musicFolder);

Bookmate.readFileSync(musicFolder.push('https://spotify.com'), {encoding: 'json'});

I'm sure you get it now.

Equivalent to the above are is:

Bookmate.readdirSync('bookmark_bar/Music reserach');

But the following throws an EINVAL error:

Bookmate.readFileSync('bookmark_bar/Music research/https://spotify.com');

Because URLs can be used as part of this "path shorthand".

… 🚧

Well this is a little embarrassing 😅 — I'm sorry, other documentation should go here. 👷‍♀️

The outstanding fs-like functions to document currently are:

• existsSync : does a path exist
• writeFileSync : create a bookmark
• mkdirSync : create a bookmark folder
• promisesWatch (*aka bookmarkChanges) : watch for changes to bookmarks (added, deleted, altered)

And other additional functions to document currently are:

• mount : attach Bookmate to the bookmarks directory (fs-like API now works)
• tryToFindBookmarksLocation : try to find the bookmarks directory
• unmount : un-attach Bookmate
• getProfileRootDir : try to get the root profile directory for Chrome
• saveWithChecksum : Chrome bookmarks require a checksum, this ensures that works
• and bookmarkChanges (same as promisesWatch, actually--just an alias! 😜 😉 xx 😜)

And, finally, the types that currently need documenting are:

• BookmarkNode : an object containing bookmark data
• SerializedPathArray : a JSON-ified array containing bookmark path segments
• PathArray : the JSON.parsed version of the above

But, not to worry--they (the fs-ones anyway) are pretty much like the NodeJS fs versions so you can head over there or read the code to know more—until somebody gets around to finishing these docs.

Implementation Progress & Roadmap 💹

• [x] emit change events for URL bookmark additions, deletions and name changes
• [x] existsSync
• [x] readFileSync
• [x] writeFileSync
• [x] readdirSync
• [x] mkdirSync
• [x] promisesWatch (*aka bookmarkChanges)
• [ ] emit events for Folder additions, deletions and name changes

Disclaimer

No connection or endorsement expressed or implied with Google, Alphabet, Chrome, Sync or the Chromium authors.

Contributions ❤️

Welcome! It's all kind of new so many you can help also set up a contributing guidelines, documentation and so on 😹

License ⚖️

AGPL-3.0 © Cris

More examples

Actual production example:

import {bookmarkChanges} from 'bookmate';

// ...

async function startObservingBookmarkChanges() {
  for await ( const change of bookmarkChanges() ) {
    switch(change.type) {
      case 'new':     archiveAndIndexURL(change.url);         break;
      case 'delete':  deleteFromIndexAndSearch(change.url);   break;
      default: break;
    }
  }
}

📗 Bookmate