history.search()

Searches the browser's history for history.HistoryItem objects matching the given criteria.

This is an asynchronous function that returns a Promise.

Syntax

var searching = browser.history.search(
  query                  // object
)

Parameters

query
An object which indicates what to look for in the browser's history. This object has the following fields:
text
string. Specifies a free-text query to the history service. Specify an empty string ("") to retrieve all history.HistoryItem objects that meet all the other criteria.
startTime Optional
number or string or object. A value indicating a date and time. This can be represented as: a Date object, an ISO 8601 date string, or the number of milliseconds since the epoch. If it is supplied, this option excludes results whose lastVisitTime is earlier than this time. If it is omitted, the search is limited to the last 24 hours.
endTime Optional
number or string or object. A value indicating a date and time.  This can be represented as: a Date object, an ISO 8601 date string, or the number of milliseconds since the epoch. If it is supplied, this option excludes results whose lastVisitTime is later than this time. If it is omitted, then all entries are considered from the start time onwards.
maxResults Optional
number. The maximum number of results to retrieve. Defaults to 100, with a minimum value of 1. The function will throw an error if you pass it a maxResults value less than 1.

Return value

A Promise. The promise will be fulfilled with an array of objects of type history.HistoryItem, each describing a single matching history item. Items are sorted in reverse chronological order.

Browser compatibility

ChromeEdgeFirefoxFirefox for AndroidOpera
Basic supportYesNo49NoYes

Examples

Logs the URL and last visit time for all history items visited in the last 24 hours:

function onGot(historyItems) {
  for (item of historyItems) {
    console.log(item.url);
    console.log(new Date(item.lastVisitTime));
  }
}
var searching = browser.history.search({text: ""});
searching.then(onGot);

Logs the URL and last visit time for all history items ever visited:

function onGot(historyItems) {
  for (item of historyItems) {
    console.log(item.url);
    console.log(new Date(item.lastVisitTime));
  }
}
var searching = browser.history.search({
   text: "",
   startTime: 0
});
searching.then(onGot);

Logs the URL and last visit time of the most recent visit to a page that contain the string "mozilla":

function onGot(historyItems) {
  for (item of historyItems) {
    console.log(item.url);
    console.log(new Date(item.lastVisitTime));
  }
}
var searching = browser.history.search({
 text: "mozilla",
 startTime: 0,
 maxResults: 1
});
searching.then(onGot);

Example extensions

Acknowledgements

This API is based on Chromium's chrome.history API. This documentation is derived from history.json in the Chromium code.

Microsoft Edge compatibility data is supplied by Microsoft Corporation and is included here under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Document Tags and Contributors

 Contributors to this page: wbamberg, Makyen, chrisdavidmills, Sheppy
 Last updated by: wbamberg,