Get URL of selected tab from extension

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23465582

Question

I have written a Firefox extension that requires the background document's URL. Normally, JavaScript's document.URL could achieve this - but this is different.

Please see my example below:

shows the browser with several tabs opened and the extension panel displayed with a

As can be seen, there are 4 tabs open:

  • BBC Homepage
  • Add-ons Manager
  • Amazon.com
  • Stack Overflow

And, the page currently being viewed is StackOverflow.com (.. indeed).

My question is: how can I retrieve the URL of the user's active window? (i.e. http://www.stackoverflow.com).

Below is the panel.html code.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <link href=panel.css rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
    </head>
    <body>
        <header><h3>Where aM I</h3></header>          
        This Mozilla extension will display the current <i>background</i> URL
    <main>
        <fieldset>
            <legend>Click the Button</legend>
            <button onclick="PageViewing()">Fetch</button>
        </fieldset>
    </main>
    <script>
        function PageViewing() {
            alert(document.URL);
        }
    </script>
</body></html>

EDIT

If placed in the main.js file, this code snippet works:

    var tabs = require("sdk/tabs");
    console.log("URL of active tab is " + tabs.activeTab.url); //yields SO.com

So in the context of my example, how could I retrieve it from P-Name/lib, for use in the P-Name/data directory - as a variable? Terminal output showing files and directory structure

Was it helpful?

Solution

You have to establish a communication protocol between module and content script. This is done with port.

In your main.js

panel.port.on('askactivetaburl', function(){
  panel.port.emit('sentactivetaburl', tabs.activeTab.url);
})

and in your panel script

self.port.on('sentactivetaburl', function(activetaburl){
  // work with activetaburl
});

self.port.emit('askactivetaburl');
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