237873 - Bookmarks-Import doesn't give error message for invalid file format

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Amit Paspunattu]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

In Bookmarks/Manage Bookmarks
On selecting File/Import, the dialog box appears which allows any file format to
be used as a bookmark. If it is a shortcut file, Firefox creates empty
directories in the bookmarks section and if it is an executable file, Firefox
doesn't do anything.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Click Bookmarks/Manage Bookmarks
2.Click File/Import
3.Select any file other than html files. For e.g. Select a shortcut file from
desktop. Firefox creates empty directories in the bookmarks section.

Actual Results:  
If the file selected is a executable, firefox did not do anything.
If the file selected is a shortcut file on desktop, firefox created empty
directories in the bookmarks section.

Expected Results:  
The browser should not have accepted other file formats as input and should have
given an error message.

Comment 1

[Robin Monks]

Is this still a prob in 0.9?

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Yes, this is still a problem. When I accidentally selected a not-bookmarks file
to import, the whole app hung momentarily and then nothing happened. No warning,
nothing.

This is something we should fix for 1.0

Comment 3

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Uhm.  The difficulty here is that there is no way to detect a -correct- bookmark
file.  The file format is such that it looks like really badly misformed HTML. 
We can detect the exact format that we use to output, but I bet other things
which write "bookmarks.html"-format files don't use that exact same format...

Comment 4

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

Minusing for 1.0, simple patches welcome (simple meaning: "If zero bookmarks
were imported, give the user a warning").

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs, filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change

Comment 6

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

fixed in bug 422919 for Firefox 3. If the file is incorrect format, or fails to parse, we pop up an error to the user.

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv