CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptgwtfirefox-addonjsni
Saurabh Agarwal
Saurabh Agarwal

Reputation: 527

How can we a get a tab element when the document is known?

Before explaining the question, I want to explain my main goal (If there is a better way than my approach):

I have the document element available with me and ideally I wanted to get a browser element such that it identifies a tab uniquely. In my previous approach I used

gBrowser.getBrowserForDocument(doc);

This returned the browser which was indeed unique to the tab (in the sense that attributes stored in it persisted across pages). If instead, I don't store the browser element, and after moving to another page in the same tab I try the above command again, then the browser is no longer the same one as before (in the sense that it has lost all the stored attributes).

Therein lies my main problem. I want to get hold of the tab browser which I am able to refer to using different documents loaded in the same tab.

I read about a similar function:

gBrowser.getBrowserForTab(tab);

I have a feeling this might work. But again, I am not able to understand where I can get the parameter "tab" from (given a document).

Note: I am using GWT for the development of the extension

EDIT: To clarify the intent of the question, here's the use case as well as my approach:

In my extension, I am interested in monitoring user behaviour on particular websites. In a way it can be thought of as a session which remains active until the user stays on the same website. During the session, I am often required to store various attributes specific to user behaviour. One of the attributes concerning the question in "isSessionActive":"Y" or "" (blank string stands for no)

To make the code more optimal, I do not instantiate a browser for all the tabs in the beginning. Instead, I wait for the cue using an onLoad function. : if a relevant website is visited

Once that happens, I make a call to get the browser using the current document element, see if it has a non empty value for the attribute isSessionActive. If it does not, I set the attributes value to "Y" and instantiate my class which handles the profiling after that.

If it has value "Y", I know that the session is still active and that I don't need to initialize.

The problem which I'm facing is that after the first instantiation, when I move to another page within the same tab, I expected that the call to gBrowser.getBrowserforDocument(doc);

would get me the browser instantiated previously since it is basically the same tab.

This is not happening. Each time I get a new Browser instance which does not have the attribute isSessionActive as "Y" (probably because the new page has a new document element). Thus, at present all my code instantiates over and over again which is what I do not want.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 281

Answers (1)

Yansky
Yansky

Reputation: 4760

If you're only working with the current tab (and not any background tabs), then you could just use gBrowser.selectedTab https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL/tabbrowser#p-selectedTab

Upvotes: 1

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