I am building a chrome extension that should get notified every time a new tab has opened and load page, and for that purpose I'am using chrome.tabs.onUpdated event.
The problem is that in case an iframe is inserted on that page/tab that is hosted on some domain(has src), onUpdated event is trigered. Is there a way to differentiate these events for "real" tab load from those triggered for iframe load?
This question helped me with my extension, recognizing the difference between a new page and loading content on the same page, so thought I'd share my solution. First you need to call onUpdated in background.js:
{ "name": "My test extension", "version": "1", "manifest_version": 2, "background": { "scripts":["background.js"] }, "content_scripts": [ { "matches": ["http://*/*", "https://*/*"], "js": ["contentscript.js"] } ], "permissions": [ "tabs" ] } chrome.tabs.onUpdated.addListener( function(tabId, changeInfo, tab) { // read changeInfo data if (changeInfo.url) { // url has changed; do something here } } ); Then you can expand that script to send message data from background.js to your content script (using chrome.runtime.sendMessage):
chrome.tabs.onUpdated.addListener( function(tabId, changeInfo, tab) { // read changeInfo data if (changeInfo.url) { // url has changed; do something here // like send message to content script chrome.tabs.sendMessage( tabId, { message: 'hello!', url: changeInfo.url }) } } ); And finally listen for that data in your extension's content script to be used however:
chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener( function(request, sender, sendResponse) { // listen for messages sent from background.js if (request.message === 'hello!') { console.log(request.url) // new url is now in content scripts! } }); You can pass whatever data you'd like from background.js. Hope that helps someone! \ (•◡•) /
tabs.onUpdated triggers when state changes between loading to complete. Presumably, inserting an iframe puts the tab to loading state again.
You could see if details.url is defined in onUpdated listener - if not, you know that the document's URL did not change.
Perhaps you should use webNavigation API instead for your purpose. There, you get a TransitionQualifier that you can use to filter out subframe navigation.
parentFrameId - The ID of the parent frame, or -1 if this is the main frame.