Javascript get element from opened window

Question

I need to open a new window and return an element contained in it.

Say we have page A and page B, I want:

open B from A

get the element interested in B

return that element to A

I tried to do so in this manner, but it doesn't work:

var newwindow = window.open("http://www.example.com"); var elem = newwindow.document.getElementById('my-id').value;

Where am I wrong? Has anyone some advice to me?

What doesn't work about it? Is there a Javascript error? Does it execute but return nothing? Does it execute but return the wrong value? — Anthony Grist
– Anthony Grist, Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 10:39
Sorry, I forgot a point. If I try to print somehow (ex. alert) this value via script I get nothing, I mean, neither the alert box. — marcosec
– marcosec, Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 10:49
@MarcoSecchiero — That just means the script terminates with an error before it reaches the alert statement. You've been asked to report those errors twice already. — Quentin
– Quentin, Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 11:21

Quentin · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-15 11:20:08Z

Since you are using an absolute URI, I'm going to assume that you are trying to grab data from a different website. You'll therefore be blocked by the same origin policy.

If that isn't the case, then you're probably hitting a race condition by trying to read the content of the document before it has finished loading.

It would be a lot easier to help if you provided the error messages that your browser is almost certainly logging to its JS console.

This is the error I got: TypeError: Cannot call method 'getElementById' of undefined

Linus Thiel · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-15 10:41:07Z

If the new window has the same protocol, domain and port, your code should work. If it's on another domain, you can't do this for security reasons.

If you control both pages, you could use window.postMessage.

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