This library allows extensions written for the Promise-based WebExtension/BrowserExt API being standardized by the W3 Browser Extensions group to be used without modification in Google Chrome.
In order to use the polyfill, it must be loaded into any context where
browser
APIs are accessed. The most common cases are background and
content scripts, which can be specified in manifest.json
:
{
// ...
"background": {
"scripts": [
"browser-polyfill.js",
"background.js"
]
},
"content_scripts": [{
// ...
"js": [
"browser-polyfill.js",
"content.js"
]
}]
}
For HTML documents, such as browserAction
popups, or tab pages, it must be
included more explicitly:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script type="application/javascript" src="browser-polyfill.js"></script>
<script type="application/javascript" src="popup.js"></script>
</head>
<!-- ... -->
</html>
And for dynamically-injected content scripts loaded by tabs.executeScript
,
it must be injected by a separate executeScript
call, unless it has
already been loaded via a content_scripts
declaration in
manifest.json
:
browser.tabs.executeScript({file: "browser-polyfill.js"});
browser.tabs.executeScript({file: "content.js"}).then(result => {
// ...
});
The Promise-based APIs in the browser
namespace work, for the most part,
very similarly to the callback-based APIs in Chrome's chrome
namespace.
The major differences are:
-
Rather than receiving a callback argument, every async function returns a
Promise
object, which resolves or rejects when the operation completes. -
Rather than checking the
chrome.runtime.lastError
property from every callback, code which needs to explicitly deal with errors registers a separate Promise rejection handler. -
Rather than receiving a
sendResponse
callback to send a response,onMessage
listeners simply return a Promise whose resolution value is used as a reply. -
Rather than nesting callbacks when a sequence of operations depend on each other, Promise chaining is generally used instead.
-
For users of an ES7 transpiler, such as Babel, the resulting Promises are generally used with
async
andawait
, rather than dealt with directly.
The following code will retrieve a list of URLs patterns from the storage
API, retrieve a list of tabs which match any of them, reload each of those
tabs, and notify the user that is has been done:
browser.storage.get("urls").then(({urls}) => {
return browser.tabs.query({url: urls});
}).then(tabs => {
return Promise.all(
Array.from(tabs, tab => browser.tabs.reload(tab.id)));
);
}).then(() => {
return browser.notifications.create({
type: "basic",
iconUrl: "icon.png",
title: "Tabs reloaded",
message: "Your tabs have been reloaded",
});
}).catch(error => {
console.error(`An error occurred while reloading tabs: ${error.message}`);
});
Or, using an async function:
async function reloadTabs() {
try {
let {urls} = await browser.storage.get("urls");
let tabs = await browser.tabs.query({url: urls});
await Promise.all(
Array.from(tabs, tab => browser.tabs.reload(tab.id)));
);
await browser.notifications.create({
type: "basic",
iconUrl: "icon.png",
title: "Tabs reloaded",
message: "Your tabs have been reloaded",
});
} catch (error) {
console.error(`An error occurred while reloading tabs: ${error.message}`);
}
}
It's also possible to use Promises effectively using two-way messaging. Communication between a background page and a tab content script, for example, looks something like this from the background page side:
browser.tabs.sendMessage("get-ids").then(results => {
processResults(results);
});
And like this from the content script:
browser.runtime.onMessage.addListener(msg => {
if (msg == "get-ids") {
return browser.storage.get("idPattern").then(({idPattern}) => {
return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(idPattern),
elem => elem.textContent);
});
}
});
or:
browser.runtime.onMessage.addListener(async function(msg) {
if (msg == "get-ids") {
let {idPattern} = await browser.storage.get("idPattern");
return Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(idPattern),
elem => elem.textContent);
}
});
Or vice versa.