Why is grabCurrentURL() not returning the current URL

Question

In popup.js in my Google Chrome extension, I have:

function sendWebResponse(hash) {
  var xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); 
  xmlhttp.open("POST", "http://localhost:3000/tasks/4123434/from_chrome");
  xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");
  xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json");
  xmlhttp.setRequestHeader('Authorization', 'Token token=463c121664d98a6dafd1086e8d0ecca0');
  xmlhttp.send(JSON.stringify(hash));  
}

function grabCurrentUrl(url) {
  chrome.tabs.query(
    {'active': true, 'lastFocusedWindow': true}, 
      function (tabs) {
        var url = tabs[0].url;
        return url;
      }
)};

The following works:

function submitTrue(id) {
  sendWebResponse({"survey": id,"result": "true");
}

But the following does not:

function submitTrue(id) {
  var url = grabCurrentUrl();
  sendWebResponse({"survey": id,"result": "true", "url": url});
}

In this case, url is null. There definitely is an active tab when I do this.

Why is grabCurrentURL() not grabbing the active tab's current URL?

'Why is grabCurrentURL() not grabbing the active tab's current URL?' Depends on when you're asking it to retrieve the tabs, as far as i know tabs.query is asynchron. — , Aug 04 '15 at 22:57

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 04 '15 at 23:31

0

So what they are all saying about it being async. You can change getCurrentUrl to be this:

function getCurrentUrl(callback) {
    chrome.tabs.query({ active: true, lastFocusedWindow: true }, function (tabs) {
        if (tabs.length > 0) { 
           callback(tabs[0].url);    
        }
        return null;
    });
}

Then you change your submitTrue to be:

function submitTrue(id) {
  getCurrentUrl(function(url) {
      sendWebResponse({"survey": id,"result": "true", "url": url});
  });
}

answered Aug 04 '15 at 23:31

JFo

91
2

strangely sometimes working and sometimes not -- have tried `currentWindow` instead of `lastFocusedWindow` and still sometimes working and sometimes not -- very odd -- i'm thinking that maybe (a) the pop-up becomes the last focused tab, or (b) the active tab does not have a URL at certain times, such as when the page is still loading – steven_noble Aug 05 '15 at 00:41
an earlier method is 100% successful in identifying the correct tab so I'm going to try storing the tab.id in a global variable and using it to retrieve the correct tab later – steven_noble Aug 05 '15 at 00:46
This worked, where currentTabID is a global variable: function getCurrentUrl(callback) { chrome.tabs.get(currentTabID, function(retrieveTab) { callback(retrieveTab.url); }) return null; } – steven_noble Aug 05 '15 at 01:17

Why is grabCurrentURL() not returning the current URL

1 Answers1