Call this function to set up a connection between the extension's background scripts (or other privileged scripts, such as popup scripts or options page scripts) and any content scripts that belong to this extension and are running in the specified tab. This function returns a runtime.Port
object.
When this is called, the runtime.onConnect
event will be fired in any content script belonging to this extension that are running in the specified tab. The event listener will be passed another runtime.Port
object. The two sides can then use the Port
objects to exchange messages.
For more details, see connection-based messaging.
Syntax
browser.tabs.connect( tabId, // integer connectInfo // optional object )
Parameters
tabId
integer
. ID of the tab whose content scripts we want to connect to.connectInfo
Optionalobject
.name
Optionalstring
. Will be passed intoruntime.onConnect
event listeners in content scripts belonging to this extension and running in the specified tab.frameId
Optionalinteger
. Open a port to a specific frame identified byframeId
instead of all frames in the tab.
Return value
runtime.Port
. A port that can be used to communicate with the content scripts running in the specified tab.
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Firefox for Android | Opera | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic support | Yes | No | 45 | 54 | Yes |
connectInfo.frameId | 41 | No | 45 | 54 | 28 |
Examples
In this example a background script listens for a click on a browser action, then connects to the currently active tab, then sends a message using the Port
that's returned from connect()
:
function connectToTab(tabs) { if (tabs.length > 0) { var examplePort = browser.tabs.connect( tabs[0].id, {name: "tabs-connect-example"} ); examplePort.postMessage({greeting: "Hi from background script"}); } } function onError(error) { console.log(`Error: ${error}`); } browser.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function() { var gettingActive = browser.tabs.query({ currentWindow: true, active: true }); gettingActive.then(connectToTab, onError); });
This API is based on Chromium's chrome.tabs
API. This documentation is derived from tabs.json
in the Chromium code.
Microsoft Edge compatibility data is supplied by Microsoft Corporation and is included here under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
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