I am trying to fix a bug in a Chrome extension. When the extension is installed an alert dialog containing the message "undefined" will be displayed seemingly at random. This does not happen when the extension is not installed.
There is not one call to alert, confirm, or prompt in the extension source code. How do I find out why the alert dialog is being displayed?
I have attempted adding the following code to one of the background scripts and to one of the content scripts.
var originalWindowAlert = window.alert;
window.alert = function() {
console.trace();
return originalWindowAlert.apply(window, arguments);
}
I have confirmed that this technique works when used in a webpage, but it is not working for the extension.
I have also built Chromium from source code and I am able to reproduce it but so far I have not been able to figure out how to determine the origin of the alert dialog. I have set a breakpoint in the RenderFrameHostImpl::RunModalAlertDialog function but I see no way to determine what caused the breakpoint to be hit.
I am getting desperate.
I asked this question on the Chromium Extensions Google Group. I got the following very useful response from Scott Fortmann-Roe.
If you do the following in a content script:
var originalWindowAlert = window.alert;
window.alert = function() {
console.trace();
return originalWindowAlert.apply(window, arguments);
}
I don't believe it will actually intercept alerts triggered by the page as you are overriding the content script's window.alert method which is different from the page's method (content script JS is isolated from page JS).
To modify the page's alert method you'll probably need to inject a script tag into the page. E.g. something along these lines in the content script:
let script = document.createElement('script');
script.textContent = `
var originalWindowAlert = window.alert;
window.alert = function() {
console.trace()
return originalWindowAlert.apply(window, arguments);
} `;
document.body.appendChild(script);
Related
Summary: I need to find a way to accomplish with programmatic injection the same exact behaviour as using content_scripts > matches with "all_frames": true on a manifest. Why? because it is the only way I've found of injecting iframe's content in an extension page without having Cross-Origin errors.
I'm moving to optional_permissions on a Chrome extension and I'm on a dead end.
What I want:
Move this behaviour to optional_permissions in order to be able to add more hosts in the future. With the current code, by adding one new host on content_scripts > matches the extension is disabled by Chrome.
For the move, I removed content_scripts in the manifest and I added "optional_permissions": ["*://*/"],. Then, I successfully implemented a dialog asking new permissions to the user with chrome.permissions.request.
As I said before, the problem is how to inject the iframe's content in an extension page.
What I've tried:
chrome.declarativeContent.RequestContentScript (mentioned here) with allFrames: true. I can only see the script running if I enter the URL directly, nothing happens when that URL is set in an iframe.
chrome.tabs.onUpdated: url is undefined for an extension page. Also, the iframe url is not detected.
Call chrome.tabs.executeScript with allFrames: true as soon as I load the first iframe. By doing this I get an exception Cannot access contents of the page. Extension manifest must request permission to access the respective host. and the "respective host" is chrome-extension://, which is not a valid host if you want to add it to the permissions.
I'm lost. I couldn't find a way to simulate the same behaviour as content_scripts > matches with programmatic injection.
Note: using webNavigation API is not an option since the extension is live and it has thousands of users. Because of this, I can not use the frameId property for executeScript. Thus, my only option with executeScript was to inject all frames but the chrome-extension host issue do not let me continue.
Update: I was able to accomplish what I wanted but only on an HTTP host. I used chrome.tabs.executeScript (option 3).
The question remains on how to make this work on an extension page.
You cannot run content scripts in any extension page, including your own.
If you want to run code in a subframe of your extension page, then you have to use frameId. There are two ways to do this, with and without webNavigation.
I've put all code snippets in this answer together (with some buttons to invoke the individual code snippets) and shared it at https://robwu.nl/s/optional_permissions-script-subframe.zip
To try it out, download and extract the zip file, load the extension at chrome://extensions and click on the extension button to open the test page.
Request optional permissions
Since the goal is to programmatically run scripts with optional permissions, you need to request the permission. My example will use example.com.
If you want to use the webNavigation API too, include its permission in the permission request too.
chrome.permissions.request({
// permissions: ['webNavigation'], // uncomment if you want this.
origins: ['*://*.example.com/*'],
}, function(granted) {
alert('Permission was ' + (granted ? '' : 'not ') + 'granted!');
});
Inject script in subframe
Once you have a tab ID and frameId, injecting scripts in a specific frame is easy. Because of the tabId requirement, this method can only work for frames in tabs, not for frames in your browserAction/pageAction popup or background page!
To demonstrate that code execution succeeds, my examples below will call the next injectInFrame function once the tabId and frameId is known.
function injectInFrame(tabId, frameId) {
chrome.tabs.executeScript(tabId, {
frameId,
code: 'document.body.textContent = "The document content replaced with content at " + new Date().toLocaleString();',
});
}
If you want to run code not just in the specific frame, but all sub frames of that frame, just add allFrames: true to the chrome.tabs.executeScript call.
Option 1: Use webNavigation to find frameId
Use chrome.tabs.getCurrent to find the ID of the tab where the script runs (or chrome.tabs.query with {active:true,currentWindow:true} if you want to know the current tabId from another script (e.g. background script).
After that, use chrome.webNavigation.getAllFrames to query all frames in the tab. The primary way of identifying a frame is by the URL of the page, so you have a problem if the framed page redirects elsewhere, or if there are multiple frames with the same URL. Here is an example:
// Assuming that you already have a frame in your document,
// i.e. <iframe src="https://example.com"></iframe>
chrome.tabs.getCurrent(function(tab) {
chrome.webNavigation.getAllFrames({
tabId: tab.id,
}, function(frames) {
for (var frame of frames) {
if (frame.url === 'https://example.com/') {
injectInFrame(tab.id, frame.frameId);
break;
}
}
});
});
Option 2: Use helper page in the frame to find frameId
The option with webNavigation looks simple but has two main disadvantages:
It requires the webNavigation permission (causing the "Read your browsing history" permission warning)
The identification of the frame can fail if there are multiple frames with the same URL.
An alternative is to first open an extension page that sends an extension message, and find the frameId (and tab ID) in the metadata that is made available in the second parameter of the chrome.runtime.onMessage listener. This code is more complicated than the other option, but it is more reliable and does not require any additional permissions.
framehelper.html
<script src="framehelper.js"></script>
framehelper.js
var parentOrigin = location.ancestorOrigins[location.ancestorOrigins.length - 1];
if (parentOrigin === location.origin) {
// Only send a message if the frame was opened by ourselves.
chrome.runtime.sendMessage(location.hash.slice(1));
}
Code to be run in your extension page:
chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(frameMessageListener);
var randomMessage = 'Random message: ' + Math.random();
var f = document.createElement('iframe');
f.src = chrome.runtime.getURL('framehelper.html') + '#' + randomMessage;
document.body.appendChild(f);
function frameMessageListener(msg, sender) {
if (msg !== randomMessage) return;
var tabId = sender.tab.id;
var frameId = sender.frameId;
chrome.runtime.onMessage.removeListener(frameMessageListener);
// Note: This will cause the script to be run on the first load.
// If the frame redirects elsewhere, then the injection can seemingly fail.
f.addEventListener('load', function onload() {
f.removeEventListener('load', onload);
injectInFrame(tabId, frameId);
});
f.src = 'https://example.com';
}
I can't seem to find any example of window.print() support in chrome packaged apps - can someone please post an example?
I'm using this
function clickHandler(e) {
window.print();
}
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
document.querySelector('button').addEventListener('click', clickHandler);
});
from "Hello World!" sample platform app, but I can't seem to get it working.
is there a special permission settings I should use?
Thanks!
Yes, window.print() works in Chrome Apps. You can find a sample in the official samples repo.
It is as simple as calling window.print() in any DOM window of your app:
// prints the content of the current window:
window.print();
// prints the content of another AppWindow:
anotherAppWindow.contentWindow.print()
AppWindow is the Chrome Apps object that encapsulates and extends the actual DOM window with app capabilities. This object can be obtained by either:
saving the parameter from the callback of chrome.app.window.create
calling chrome.app.window.current() on any code running in the context of the desired window
Is there a simple way where I can access a global javascript variable through content-scripts in chrome extensions?
Accessing global object from content script in chrome extension
I followed the steps mentioned in the above link, but it did not work out for me. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Shankar
I managed to complete it. Thanks for the help. I used simple message passing to retrieve the value from the extension script to the content script. The place where I had missed was, the listener at the extension script needs to be at the background page (I think so). Once I changed that, it worked.
For those from the future looking for an answer to this question, here's how I do it:
function getVariable(v) {
var c = document.createElement("div");
c.id = 'var-data';
c.style.display = 'none';
document.body.appendChild(c);
var s = document.createElement('script');
s.innerHTML = 'document.getElementById("var-data").innerText=JSON.stringify('+v+');';
document.head.appendChild(s);
var data = JSON.parse(c.innerText);
c.remove();
s.remove();
return data;
}
And basic usage:
getVariable('globalVarIWantToAccess');
All this script goes in the content-script, not the code for the main webpage, which means that no co-operation is needed from the webpage itself. Basically, the getVariable function creates a script element which is injected into the main page. This script tag retrieves the requested global variable and puts the data into a new div. The function then gets this data from the new div, deletes the new div, deletes the new script element and returns the data.
I want to develop an extension that runs in the background and listens to keystrokes and stores them as a string in a variable. For example, if I have 5 tabs in a chrome browser window and I press a,b,c,d,e on each tab of the window; the final string should be abcde.
Could any please provide a sample code for this?
Help will be greatly appreciated.
You could add code like this to a content script:
var bodyElement = document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];
bodyElement.addEventListener("keypress", function(e){
console.log(e);
console.log(String.fromCharCode(e.keyCode));
});
The body element must be loaded for this code to work, so use jQuery's $(document).ready(), or similar, or in the extension manifest set the run_at value for the script to document_end.
In Google Chrome's extension developer section, it says
The HTML pages inside an extension
have complete access to each other's
DOMs, and they can invoke functions on
each other. ... The popup's contents
are a web page defined by an HTML file
(popup.html). The popup doesn't need
to duplicate code that's in the
background page (background.html)
because the popup can invoke functions
on the background page
I've loaded and tested jQuery, and can access DOM elements in background.html with jQuery, but I cannot figure out how to get access to DOM elements in popup.html from background.html.
can you discuss why you would want to do that? A background page is a page that lives forever for the life time of your extension. While the popup page only lives when you click on the popup.
In my opinion, it should be refactored the other way around, your popup should request something from the background page. You just do this in the popup to access the background page:
chrome.extension.getBackgroundPage()
But if you insist, you can use simple communication with extension pages with sendRequest() and onRequest. Perhaps you can use chrome.extension.getViews
I understand why you want to do this as I have run into the problem myself.
The easiest thing I could think of was using Google's method of a callback - the sendRequest and onRequest methods work as well, but I find them to be clunky and less straightforward.
Popup.js
chrome.extension.getBackgroundPage().doMethod(function(params)
{
// Work with modified params
// Use local variables
});
Background.html
function doMethod(callback)
{
if(callback)
{
// Create/modify params if needed
var params;
// Invoke the callback
callback(params);
}
}
As other answers mention, you can call background.js functions from popup.js like so:
var _background = chrome.extension.getBackgroundPage();
_background.backgroundJsFunction();
But to access popup.js or popup.html from background.js, you're supposed to use the messages architecture like so:
// in background.js
chrome.runtime.sendMessage( { property: value } );
// in popup.js
chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(handleBackgroundMessages);
function handleBackgroundMessages(message)
{
if (message.property === value)
// do stuff
}
However, it seems that you can synchronously access popup.js from background.js, just like you can synchronously access the other way around. chrome.extension.getViews can get you the popup window object, and you can use that to call functions, access variables, and access the DOM.
var _popup = chrome.extension.getViews( { type: 'popup' } )[0];
_popup.popupJsFunction();
_popup.document.getElementById('element');
_popup.document.title = 'poop'
Note that getViews() will return [] if the popup is not open, so you have to handle that.
I'm not sure why no one else mentioned this. Perhaps there's some pitfalls or bad practices to this that I've overlooked? But in my limited testing in my own extension, it seems to work.