Cid Dennis

Firefox 4 Jetpack Autoupdate

So I am working on a new FireFox4 extension using the new JetPack SDK and had a hard time finding the docs to use the browsers auto update feature.    After a number of google search I finally found this link https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/sdk/1.0b4/docs/dev-guide/addon-development/cfx-tool.html.   

 

Here is what it says hope this helps other find out how to do this faster.

 

updateURL and updateLink

If you choose to host the XPI yourself you should enable the host application to find new versions of your add-on.

To do this, include a URL in the XPI called the updateURL: the host application will go here to get information about updates. At the updateURL you host a file in the update RDF format: among other things, this includes another URL calledupdateLink which points to the updated XPI itself.

The --update-link and --update-url options simplify this process. Both options take a URL as an argument.

The --update-link option builds an update RDF alongside the XPI, and embeds the supplied URL in the update RDF as the value of updateLink.

The --update-url option embeds the supplied URL in the XPI file, as the value of updateURL.

So if we run the following command:

  cfx xpi --update-link http://example.com/addon/latest
          --update-url http://example.com/addon/update_rdf

cfx will create two files:

• an XPI file which embeds http://example.com/addon/update_rdf as the value of updateURL
• an RDF file which embeds http://example.com/addon/latest as the value of updateLink.

 

How to find out if you are in an iframe when responding to DOMContentLoaded event in Firefox Extention

So I am working on a Firefox Extension and did not want my overlay to load in iframe on a page. After searching around I found this little bit of code that will tell you based on  the DOMContentLoaded  event.

 

function isTopLevelWindow(event)

{

    var window_interface =
          window.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIInterfaceRequestor)      

          .getInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIWebNavigation)
          .QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIDocShellTreeItem)
          .rootTreeItem
          .QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIInterfaceRequestor)
          .getInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIDOMWindow);

    var doc = event.target;        

    for (var i = 0; i < window_interface.gBrowser.browsers.length; i++) {
        if (window_interface.gBrowser.browsers[i].contentDocument == doc) {
              return true; 
            }
    }     
    return false;

}

 

How to get to the current tabs Javascript context from a XUL window

So I am writing a browser pluging for Firefox and need to get to the javascript environment of the current tab the user was looking at.    Here is the code that allows that to happen.

 

 

var mainWindow = window.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIInterfaceRequestor)                .getInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIWebNavigation)                .QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIDocShellTreeItem)        .rootTreeItem                        .QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIInterfaceRequestor)                  .getInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIDOMWindow);

var current_doc = mainWindow.gBrowser.contentWindow.wrappedJSObject;        

if (typeof(current_doc.menu_items) != "undefined") {           build_menu(current_doc.menu_items);

}

    

 

Notice I check if the variable I want exist or not.   This is because in my case it is possible that the page being show does not have the variable I was interested in.  

 

Also I removed a bunch of name-spacing in order to make it more readable.