onclick or inline script isn't working in extension

teeZee picture teeZee · Nov 27, 2012 · Viewed 103.4k times · Source

This seems to be the easiest thing to do, but it's just not working. In a normal browser the .html and .js files works perfectly, but in the Chrome/Firefox extension the onClick function is not performing what it's supposed to do.

.js file:

function hellYeah(text) {
  document.getElementById("text-holder").innerHTML = text;
}

.html file:

<!doctype html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>
      Getting Started Extension's Popup
    </title>
    <script src="popup.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="text-holder">
      ha
    </div>
    <br />
    <a onClick=hellYeah("xxx")>
      hyhy
    </a>
  </body>
</html>

So basically once the user clicks "hyhy", "ha" should change into "xxx". And again - it works perfectly in the browser but does not work in the extension. Do you know why? Just in case I'm attaching the manifest.json below as well.

manifest.json:

{
  "name": "My First Extension",
  "version": "1.0",
  "manifest_version": 2,
  "description": "The first extension that I made.",
  "browser_action": {
    "default_icon": "icon.png",
    "default_popup": "popup.html"
  },
  "permissions": [
    "http://api.flickr.com/"
  ]
}

Answer

David picture David · Nov 27, 2012

Chrome Extensions don't allow you to have inline JavaScript (documentation).
The same goes for Firefox WebExtensions (documentation).

You are going to have to do something similar to this:

Assign an ID to the link (<a onClick=hellYeah("xxx")> becomes <a id="link">), and use addEventListener to bind the event. Put the following in your popup.js file:

document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
    var link = document.getElementById('link');
    // onClick's logic below:
    link.addEventListener('click', function() {
        hellYeah('xxx');
    });
});

popup.js should be loaded as a separate script file:

<script src="popup.js"></script>