pass dom element from background script to chrome.tabs.executeScript - google-chrome

Question

I'm trying to pass the active dom element when the contextmenu is clicked from my background script to a script that is being called through chrome.tabs.executeScript. I can pass booleans and strings just fine, but i always get an error when i pass dom elements. I'm starting to think it's not possible.
//doScripts function called from browser action
chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
doScripts(true, null);
});
//doScripts function called from context menu click
function getClickHandler(info, tab) {
var currTarg = document.activeElement;
console.log("currTarg = " + currTarg);
doScripts(false, currTarg);
}
//i reference doingBrowserAction and contextTarg in myscript.js
function doScripts(context, targ){
chrome.tabs.executeScript(null, {code: "var doingBrowserAction = "+context+"; var contextTarg = "+targ+";"}, function(){
chrome.tabs.executeScript(null, {file: "js/myscript.js"}, function(){
//all injected
});
});
}
//setup context menu
chrome.contextMenus.create({
"title" : "DESTROY!",
"type" : "normal",
"contexts" : ["page","selection","link","editable","image","video","audio"],
"onclick" : getClickHandler
});
i reference doingBrowserAction and contextTarg in myscript.js. I know what i'm trying to do is possible because the adblock extension does it, but having a hard time figuring out how. thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You cannot get a direct reference to a content script's DOM element from the background page, because the background page runs in the extension's process, and the content script runs in the tab's process. See also https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=39507.
The document.activeElement property in the background page refers to the active element in the background page's document. As you can imagine, this value is quite useless.
If you query the state of the currently right-clicked element, bind an event in the content script. In the next example, I've chosen the contextmenu event, because context menus can also be opened through the keyboard.
This example adds a context menu option that removes the last active element from the document.
// content script
var lastElementContext;
document.addEventListener('contextmenu', function(event) {
lastElementContext = event.target;
}, true);
chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(function(message, sender, sendResponse) {
if (lastElementContext && lastElementContext.parentNode) {
lastElementContext.parentNode.removeChild(lastElementContext);
lastElementContext = null;
}
});
Background script:
chrome.contextMenus.create({
title: 'DESTROY!',
contexts: ['page', 'link', 'editable', 'image', 'video', 'audio'],
onclick: function(info, tab) {
chrome.tabs.sendMessage(tab.id, 'doDestroy');
}
});