Question

The workflow requested by customer is something like this :

The user on registration form clicks a button, opening another window:

$ ->
  $("a.popup").on 'click', (e) ->
    e.preventDefault()
    newWindowCenter($(this).attr("href"), $(this).attr("data_width"), $(this).attr("data_height"), "authPopup")

where

newWindowCenter = (url, width, height, name) ->
  left = (screen.width / 2) - (parseInt(width) / 2);
  top = (screen.height / 2) - (parseInt(height) / 2);
  window.addEventListener("dataAvailable", transferAccountData, false)
  window.open(url, name,
"menubar=no,toolbar=no,status=no,width="+width+",height="+height+",alwaysRaise=yes,toolbar=no,left="+left+",top="+top)

In this new window he’s got some data, usage of which he confirms by clicking a button, so:

$(".confirm_data_usage").on 'click', (e) ->
    e.preventDefault()
    if (window.opener)

      accountData= {...}

      data = {...} #collected in opened window

      approveDataTransfer = document.createEvent("Events")

      approveDataTransfer.dataTransfer = data          

      approveDataTransfer.initEvent("dataAvailable", true, false)
      approveDataTransfer.eventType = "data available"

      window.opener.dispatchEvent(approveDataTransfer)

   window.close()

So after clicking the ‘confirm_data_usage’ button the function inserting this data is fired in opener window

transferAccountData = (event) ->
  data = event.dataTransfer
  ...

Thing is: it is working in Chrome and Opera, but in Firefox event.dataTransfer is undefined. Anyone sees an obvious mistake / knows something specific in Firefox preventing event from transferring data ? Maybe there is another way ? Could the problem be related to isTrusted attribute on approveDataTransfer event?

Answer 1

I’m not sure what’s going on with your event data but the way I usually handle this sort of thing is to attach a function to window:

window.transferAccountData = (data) ->
    # Whatever needs to be done goes here...

And then in the new window, you can call that function directly through window.opener:

window.opener.transferAccountData(data)

I haven’t had any problems with this approach in any browser.