chrome.contextMenus in hosted app's local page - google-chrome

I try to add context menu item to my hosted app. When i add code like this, context menu appears in all pages:
chrome.contextMenus.create({
'title' : 'reload image',
'contexts' : ['image'],
'onclick' : function(info, tab) {
}, 'documentUrlPatterns' : ['<all_urls>']
});
But this item is not displayed in my app. When i change documentUrlPattern to:
['chrome-extension://extensionId/*']
Nothing happens. How can i add context menu item to my hosted app's local page?

You cannot inject context menu in any extension page. That is unfortunately limitation. The engineers state it is a security limitation. A search in crbug.com can give you some ideas why.

Related

Google Chrome - add to homescreen - force refresh

I have a website with "add to homescreen" enabled - i.e. I have got a manifest.json file with "display": "standalone".
The problem I'm having is when I open the website via the homescreen shortcut, it will resume from when I last accessed it. I have to pull to refresh to make it fetch the latest content.
My question is, is it possible to make it do a refresh every time it is accessed?
If you'd like to take specific action inside of your web app whenever it moves from the "background" to the "foreground" again, you could listen for the appropriate events using the Page Lifecycle API.
The most straightforward way of doing this would probably be to listen for visibilitychange events, and programmatically refresh your data source when you detect that the current visibilityState has transitioned to 'visible'.
This could look like:
document.addEventListener('visibilitychange', () => {
if (document.visibilityState === 'visible') {
// Your refresh logic goes here.
}
});

Why page_action couldn't appear on pop-up windows?

I'm making a chrome extension and using page_action instead of browser_action because I need this extension for only one specific url. I'm using declerativeContent for activating the page_action;
// When the extension is installed or upgraded ...
chrome.runtime.onInstalled.addListener(function() {
// Replace all rules ...
chrome.declarativeContent.onPageChanged.removeRules(undefined, function() {
// With a new rule ...
chrome.declarativeContent.onPageChanged.addRules([
{
// That fires when a page's URL contains ...
conditions: [
new chrome.declarativeContent.PageStateMatcher({
pageUrl: { hostEquals: 'www.example.com', schemes: ['https'] },
})
],
// And shows the extension's page action.
actions: [ new chrome.declarativeContent.ShowPageAction() ]
}
]);
});
});
In normal tabs of chrome, there is no problem. Page_action works exactly the way I want. But in pop-up windows, there is a problem. I mean, there is page that contains links to pop-up pages. When I click to them, pop-up windows open but I can't see the page_actions in the address bar.
What could be the problem?
Unfortunately, Google Chrome extensions doesn't provide page_action icon on the adress bar in pop-up windows. But still, extension works on that window. You should think other ways to make your extension functional.

How can I know if my Chrome Extension is called from a New Tab page?

My Chrome Extension has a popup with a few links, which I would like to be opened in the current tab if it's a New Tab page, or open in a new tab otherwise. So I believe I need to know the active tab's URL. Or is there another way to identify a New Tab?
I'd like to use the "activeTab" permission rather than "tabs" - I want the user to see as few permissions listed as possible.
The only way I've found to identify the tab's URL is by using a background page and
chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab))
But this is not compatible with having a popup defined in the manifest. I can set the popup page programatically, but I can't see a way to make the popup appear. Is there a way to do that?
When I have default_popup defined in the manifest I use
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function ())
to launch the related code, so no reference to the active tab is available. Is there another way to run the code, or to get the active tab?
Thanks.
The activeTab permission allows you to "Get the URL, title, and favicon for that tab via an API that returns a tabs.Tab object". So, to get the current tab URL from the popup you can do:
chrome.tabs.query( {active:true, currentWindow: true}, function(tabs) {
currentUrl = tabs[0].url;
});

How can I open my extension's pop-up with JavaScript?

I am trying to write a JavaScript function that will open my extension like when the extension icon is clicked. I know how to open my extension in a new tab:
var url = "chrome-extension://kelodmiboakdjlbcdfoceeiafckgojel/login.html";
window.open(url);
But I want to open a pop-up in the upper right corner of the browser, like when the extension icon is clicked.
The Chromium dev team has explicitly said they will not enable this functionality. See Feature request: open extension popup bubble programmatically :
The philosophy for browser and page action popups is that they must be triggered by user action. Our suggestion is to use the new html notifications feature...
Desktop notifications can be used progammatically to present the user with a small HTML page much like your popup. It's not a perfect substitution, but it might provide the type of functionality you need.
Chrome team did create a method to open the popup programmatically, but it's only enabled as a private API, and plans to make it generally available have stalled due to security concerns.
So, as of March 2018 as of now, you still can't do it.
Short answer is that you cannot open browserAction programmatically. But you can create a dialog with your content script which emulates your browserAction and display that isntead (programmatically). However you won't be able to access your extension's background page from this popup directly as you can from your popup.html. You will have to pass message instead to your extension.
As mentioned there is no public API for this.
One workaround I have come up with is launching the extension as an iframe inside a content script with a button click. Whereby the background script emits the extension URL to the content script to be set as the iframe's src, something like below.
background.js
browser.runtime.onMessage.addListener((request) => {
if (request.open) {
return new Promise(resolve => {
chrome.browserAction.getPopup({}, (popup) => {
return resolve(popup)
})
})
}
})
content-scipt.js
const i = document.createElement('iframe')
const b = document.createElement('button')
const p = document.getElementById('some-id')
b.innerHTML = 'Open'
b.addEventListener('click', (evt) => {
evt.preventDefault()
chrome.runtime.sendMessage({ open: true }, (response) => {
i.src = response
p.appendChild(i)
})
})
p.appendChild(b)
This opens the extension in the DOM of the page the script is running on. You will also need to add the below to the manifest.
manifest.json
....
"web_accessible_resources": [
"popup.html"
]
....
You could emulate the popup by displaying a fixed html element on the page in the same location the popup would be and style it to look like the popup.
I had the same requirement: When the user clicks on the extension icon a small popup should open. In my case, I was writing an extension which will give updates on selective stocks whenever the icon is clicked. This is how my popup looked.
If you were having the same requirement then please read the answer below.
This is how my manifest.json file looked.
All the heavy lifting was handled by manifest.json file only. There is a section browser_action inside which there is a key called default_popup, just put the name of the HTML file that you want the popup to display.
I wanted my extension to work on all the pages that's why I added the attribute matches under content_scripts. I really didn't need to put the jquery file jquery-3.2.1.js inside the js array but the extension manager was not allowing me to keep that array empty.
Hope this helps, do comment if you have any doubt regarding the answer.

How to add a custom item into the chrome context menu?

Is there any API to be used to add a custom item into the chrome context menu?
For example:
Now, I wanna add a "send to ..." item to context menu(right click), when it is clicked the contents selected in the webpage will be sent to someone.
I searched the chrome APIS and found that chrome.experimental.contextMenu is competent for my requirement, however it is experimental API so something like "path_to_chrome.exe --enable-experimental-extension-apis" will be added.
Any other solutions?
Now (for long time) you have an option.
Add this permission to your manifest.json file
"permissions": ["contextMenus"]
Then, something like that will do the trick:
chrome.contextMenus.create({
'title' : 'Open this select text %s',
'contexts' : ['selection'],
'onclick' : function(info, tab) {
console.log('Selected link: ' + info.selectionText);
}
});
Good luck.
Using contextMenu is the one and only way (outside of hacking on the Chromium source), but the API should be graduating from experimental when Google Chrome 6 gets released to the stable channel.