Question

I’m using the Firefox Add-on Builder and here is what I have so far:

main.js:

var widgets = require("widget");
var tabs = require("tabs");
var data = require("self").data;

var widget = widgets.Widget({
  id: "div-show",
  label: "Show divs",
  contentURL: "http://www.mozilla.org/favicon.ico",
  onClick: function() {
    tabs.activeTab.attach({
      contentScriptFile: [data.url("jquery.js"), data.url("myScript.js")]
    });
  }
});

myScript.js

var first = $(".avatar:first");
var url = first.attr("href");

Now I’m stuck on how to have the url variable passed back to main.js so it can open the url in a new tab. From myScript.js I don’t have access to the tabs object declared in main.js.

Answer 1

Sure! The attach method returns a worker instance that you can use to set up an event handler:

// main.js
var widgets = require("widget");
var tabs = require("tabs");
var data = require("self").data;

var widget = widgets.Widget({
  id: "div-show",
  label: "Show divs",
  contentURL: "http://www.mozilla.org/favicon.ico",
  onClick: function() {
    var worker = tabs.activeTab.attach({
        contentScriptFile: [data.url("jquery.js"), data.url("myScript.js")]
    });
    worker.port.on('got-url', function(data) {
        tabs.open(data.url);
    });
  }
});

// myScript.js script:
var first = $(".avatar:first");
var url = first.attr("href");
self.port.emit('got-url', {url: url});

For more on this, see the docs for the attach method:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/1.5/packages/addon-kit/docs/tabs.html#attach%28options%29

…as well as the content scripts guide:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/1.5/dev-guide/addon-development/web-content.html

Caveat: haven’t run this code, but it should work.