Contributing¶

Technicalities¶

(might be outdated)

Adding support for a new browser¶

Browsers are defined in browser_history/browsers.py. To add a new browser, create a new class extending the browser_history.generic.Browser. See Browser Functionality for the class variables that must be set and their description. Currently only browsers which use SQLite databases to store history are supported.

Adding support for a new platform¶

(platform here refers to an OS)

This one is tricky. Platforms are defined in browser_history.utils.Platform. To add a new platform, the following must be updated.

Add the platform to browser_history.utils.Platform
Update browser_history.utils.get_platform() to correctly return the platform.
Update the __init__ method of browser_history.generic.Browser and create a new class variable for that platform.
Update as many Supported Browsers as possible with the platform_path for the new platform.

Tests¶

Test Home directory:

Tests are done by including a minimal copy of the browser files with the correct paths. For example, on Linux platform and for the Firefox browser, tests/test_homedirs/Linux contains a minimal snapshot of the home directory with only the files required for extracting history which is the following for Firefox on Linux:

test_homedirs/Linux
└── .mozilla
    └── firefox
        └── profile
            └── places.sqlite

It would be a great help for us if you contribute any missing platform-browser combination, even if you don’t write any tests accompanying them.

Writing Tests:

Tests are executed using pytest. Monkeypatching is used to change the home directory to one of the test directories and to emulate the home directory of a different platform.

The monkeypatches are defined in tests/utils.py. The change_homedir fixture must be used for all tests and one of become_windows, become_mac or become_linux. Look at some tests in tests/test_browsers.py for examples.