I am looking for a function inside a webpage te activate a chrome extension.
Imagine that http://www.example.com/test.html contains:
<script>
hello();
</script>
And my background page contains the definition of the hello
function:
function hello() {
alert("test");
}
How can I make sure that the Chrome extension's background page's hello
is called when test.html
calls hello();
?
Before a web page is able to call a background page's function, the following problems need to be solved:
hello();
from a web page. This is done by injecting a script defining hello
using Content scripts. The injected function communicates with the content script using a custom event or postMessage
.chrome.runtime.sendMessage
.sendMessage
/ onMessage
, see below).postMessage
to send a message to the web page.All of these methods are asynchronous, and have to be implemented through callback functions.
These steps need to be designed carefully. Here's a generic implementation which implements all of the above steps. What you need to know about the implementation:
sendMessage
method whenever the content script need to be contacted.sendMessage(<mixed message> [, <function callback>])
contentscript.js
// Random unique name, to be used to minimize conflicts:
var EVENT_FROM_PAGE = '__rw_chrome_ext_' + new Date().getTime();
var EVENT_REPLY = '__rw_chrome_ext_reply_' + new Date().getTime();
var s = document.createElement('script');
s.textContent = '(' + function(send_event_name, reply_event_name) {
// NOTE: This function is serialized and runs in the page's context
// Begin of the page's functionality
window.hello = function(string) {
sendMessage({
type: 'sayhello',
data: string
}, function(response) {
alert('Background said: ' + response);
});
};
// End of your logic, begin of messaging implementation:
function sendMessage(message, callback) {
var transporter = document.createElement('dummy');
// Handles reply:
transporter.addEventListener(reply_event_name, function(event) {
var result = this.getAttribute('result');
if (this.parentNode) this.parentNode.removeChild(this);
// After having cleaned up, send callback if needed:
if (typeof callback == 'function') {
result = JSON.parse(result);
callback(result);
}
});
// Functionality to notify content script
var event = document.createEvent('Events');
event.initEvent(send_event_name, true, false);
transporter.setAttribute('data', JSON.stringify(message));
(document.body||document.documentElement).appendChild(transporter);
transporter.dispatchEvent(event);
}
} + ')(' + JSON.stringify(/*string*/EVENT_FROM_PAGE) + ', ' +
JSON.stringify(/*string*/EVENT_REPLY) + ');';
document.documentElement.appendChild(s);
s.parentNode.removeChild(s);
// Handle messages from/to page:
document.addEventListener(EVENT_FROM_PAGE, function(e) {
var transporter = e.target;
if (transporter) {
var request = JSON.parse(transporter.getAttribute('data'));
// Example of handling: Send message to background and await reply
chrome.runtime.sendMessage({
type: 'page',
request: request
}, function(data) {
// Received message from background, pass to page
var event = document.createEvent('Events');
event.initEvent(EVENT_REPLY, false, false);
transporter.setAttribute('result', JSON.stringify(data));
transporter.dispatchEvent(event);
});
}
});
background.js
chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(function(message, sender, sendResponse) {
if (message && message.type == 'page') {
var page_message = message.message;
// Simple example: Get data from extension's local storage
var result = localStorage.getItem('whatever');
// Reply result to content script
sendResponse(result);
}
});
A Chrome extension is not complete without a manifest file, so here's the manifest.json
file which I used to test the answer:
{
"name": "Page to background and back again",
"version": "1",
"manifest_version": 2,
"background": {
"scripts": ["background.js"]
},
"content_scripts": [{
"matches": ["http://jsfiddle.net/jRaPj/show/*"],
"js": ["contentscript.js"],
"all_frames": true,
"run_at": "document_start"
}]
}
This extension was tested at http://jsfiddle.net/jRaPj/show/ (containing hello();
as seen in the question), and shows a dialog saying "Background said: null".
Open the background page, use localStorage.setItem('whatever', 'Hello!');
to see that the message is correctly changed.