Question

I am developing an extension and I do not wish to use the options page. I use a browser action (the icon appears on the top-right), and some preferences are made trough that page and I store them in localStorage.

However, my content script needs to read that localStorage but I know that it cannot access it. I looked the message passing but could not accomplish what I would wanted.

Here what I have tried:

popup.js

$(document).ready(function(){
    chrome.extension.onRequest.addListener(function(request, sender, sendResponse) {
        if (request.method == "getList")
            sendResponse({status: localStorage['list']});
        else
            sendResponse({}); // snub them.
        });
});

content.js

$(document).ready(function(){
    var p;
    chrome.extension.sendRequest({method: "getList"}, function(response) {
        p = response.status;
        alert(response.status);
    });
});

Answer 1

The popup is ephemeral meaning that the code only lives for the time that the popup is open. This means that your listener will be lost.

Move the code for your listener from your popup.html in to a background page, then this should work fine.