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JEP Content scripts
Most of the Add-on SDK APIs are designed around content scripts
which are not necessary easy to grok or work with. In addition we
ended up adding set of content-script associated options to each API.
In some cases it also maybe neat to have an ability to share content
script instance in different APIs contexts like PageMod and
ContextMenu for example.
- Allow reuse of content scripts
- Allow sharing of content-scripts for different APIs (PageMod, ContextMenu)
Instead of making each API take content script related options we
probably could have an API to create a ContentScript instance instead:
let script = ContentScript({
uri: contentScriptFile, // file to create content script from
// source: code, // Or an option to create from source itself.
});
// Set up listeners for `message` event for all scripts.
script.port.on('message', function(port, data) {
// Reply back to the `port` message was received from.
port.emit('reply', compute(data));
});
// Use created content script in a page mod.
let mod = PageMod({
include: "*.org",
contentScript: script
});
// Execute content script in the context of currently active
// tab (Page.mod will use same `spawn` method).
script.spawn(tabs.activeTab);
// Execute content script in the context of a hidden page.
script.spawn(hiddenPage);
// Listen to content script spawns and get a communication
// port.
script.on('spawn', function(port) {
port.emit('hello !!');
});This will allow decoupling of content script logic from rest of the APIs and allow improvements in that area without changing each API individually.
This maybe a great option to solve some of the inherent problems
like asynchronous communications with a host add-on. For some
operations it's way more convenient to do things async but with
less callbacks. Some experiments have being made in ActorJS
and TaskJS to make this less painful using generators. We or
community would be able to experiment with special flavor of
ContentScript that uses generators for example:
let clipboard = require("clipboard");
let Actor = require('other-lib/actors').Actor;
let script = Actor(function() {
let text = yield this.receive('clipboard.get');
document.activeElement.value = text;
})
// Either traditional content-script API
script.port.on('clipboard.get', function(port) {
port.emit('clipboard.get', clipboard.get());
});
// Or maybe some library sugar ?
script.expose(clipboard);
// And maybe even more sugar ?
let script = Actor(function() {
let clipboard = yield require('clipboard');
document.activeElement.value = clipboard.get();
});