How send data to Firefox extension from external application - firefox

We have developed extension addon-sdk with js-ctypes.
Is there anything in firefox what can get some data from external application.
May be need use this https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK/Low-Level_APIs/test_httpd ?

There are a bunch of possibilities... E.g.
Sockets via nsISocketTransport and/or nsIServerSocket.
HTTP via regular XHR and/or nsIHttpServer (you kinda already found that one).
Lower-level OS APIs via js-ctypes.

Related

How to register a custom URL scheme handler with WebKit for Windows?

I have a Windows application showing web content using WebKit.
Now I'd like some specific URLs to be handled locally by the application instead of loaded from the server.
Let's say the javascript code of the page tries to request http://example.com/SomeFcgiRequest.fcgi.
This request shall be catched and the data of the response shall be generated by the application.
My idea was to use the WebResourceLoadDelegate for changing the URL scheme to a custom scheme (e.g. custom://example.com/SomeFcgiRequest.fcgi) and register a scheme handler for handling these requests.
There is a way to do it for MacOS/iOS using the WKURLSchemeHandler protocol and registering it with setURLSchemeHandler:forURLScheme:.
For the GTK port I found this.
But I couldn't figure out how this can be done using the Windows port of WebKit. For me it seems to be not (yet) implemented.
Can someone point me in the right direction?

Create Protocol Handler in firefox addon sdk

I want to create an extension with a protocol handler using firfox addon-sdk. So that if i do shan:something it should redirect to some other url like (www.google.com).
Thanks in advance.
To access Components, i.e. features outside the the SDK modules you will need to use require("chrome") to import those capabilities.
The rest is already covered by the answer that #noitdart linked.

can you load external executable javascript from a firefox extension?

Does anyone know if there is a way to load any external executable javascript from a firefox add-on extension? I looked into scriptloader.loadSubScript, but it appears that it can only load from a local resource.
Any help would be appreciated.
You can always xhr for a file, save the contents to disk, then use scriptloader.loadSubScript with an add-on
this would violate the AMO policies though, so you wouldn't be able to upload the add-on to http://addons.mozilla.org
As #erikvold already pointed out, doing so would be a security hazard AND it also violates AMO rules (because it is a security hazard).
Consider your server gets compromised, or there is a way to MITM the connection retrieving the remote script (TLS bugs anyone :p), or you sell your domain and the new owner decides to ship a script to collect credit card information straight from a user's hard disk...
However, it is possible to run a remote script in an unprivileged environment, much like it would run in a website.
Create a Sandbox. The Sandbox should be unprivileged, e.g. pass an URL in your domain into the constructor.
Retrieve your script, e.g. with XHR.
Evaluate your script in the Sandbox and pull out any data it might have generated for you.
This is essentially what tools like Greasemonkey (executing user scripts) do.
Creating and working with Sandboxes in a secure fashion is hard, and the Sandbox being unprivileged prohibits a lot of use cases, but maybe it will work for your stuff.
Try using Components.utils.import .
Example :
const {Cc,Ci,Cu} = require("chrome");
Cu.import("url/path of the file");
Note :
js file which uses DOM objects like window, navigator, etc. will return error saying "window/navigator is undefined". This is simply because the main.js code does not have access to DOM.
Refer this thread for more information.

Implementing my own protocol and using it through my browser

I want to create a new protocol so that I can view the data retrieved through the protocol in the browser.
For example, I want to be able to go to myprotocol://www.filepath.com/img.jpg and view the image.
Where myprotocol is defined by myself.
I have read about registering application handling here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa767914%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
with this it is possible to run a desktop exe that receives the url I am trying to access. How would I return the retrieved jpg to the browser for viewing, so that it behaves like a normal protocol, such as http?
Thanks
That registration will allow you to bind an application to the uri, so if launched through windows explorer (including "Run") and from command line, then the app is launched and the uri passed to it as an argument (much like if you double-click a file, the default app for it is launched and the path to the file passed).
For example, your "default" browser will have http:// associated with it in this way.
It is still up to the application itself to have its own handling of the URI when it is passed as an argument. If you want to make a browser handle your new protocol, you will have to write an extension/plugin/add-on/whatever-that-browser's-makers-call-it to add further functionality to the browser. This is a separate job for Firefox, IE, Chrome, Konqueror, Chromium (well, at least it might be sharable with Chrome), etc. with separate APIs to deal with.

How can a bookmarklet access a Firefox extension (or vice versa)

I have written a Firefox extension that catches when a particular URL is entered and does some stuff. My main app launches Firefox with this URL. The URL contains sensitive information so I don't want it being stored in the history.
I'm concerned about the case where the extension is not installed. If its not installed and Firefox gets launched with the sensitive URL, it will get stored in history and there's nothing I can do about it. So my idea is to use a bookmarklet.
I will launch Firefox with "javascript:window.location.href='pleaseinstallthisplugin.html'; sensitiveinfo='blahblah'".
If the extension is not installed they will get redirected to a page that tells them to install it and the sensitive info won't get stored in the history. If the extension IS installed it will grab the information in the sensitiveinfo variable and do its thing.
My question is, can the bookmarklet call a method in the extension to pass the sensitive info (and if so, how) or can the extension catch when javascript is being called in the bookmarklet?
How can a bookmarklet and Firefox extension communicate?
p.s. The alternative means of getting around this situation would be for my main app to launch Firefox and communicate with the extension using sockets but I am loath to do that because I've run into too many issues over the years with users with crazy firewalls blocking socket communication. I'd like to do everything without sockets if possible.
As far as I know, bookmarklets can never access chrome files (extensions).
Bookmarklets are executed in the scope of the current document, which is almost always a content document. However, if you are passing it in via the command line, it seems to work:
/Applications/Namoroka.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin javascript:alert\(Components\)
Accessing Components would throw if it was not allowed, but the alert displays the proper object.
You could use unsafeWindow to inject a global. You can add a mere property so that your bookmarklet only needs to detect whether the global is defined or not, but you should know that, as far as I know, there is no way to prohibit sites in a non-bookmarklet context from also sniffing for this same global (since it may be a privacy concern to some that sites can detect whether they are using the extension). I have confirmed in my own add-on which injects a global in a manner similar to that below that it does work in a bookmarklet as well as regular site context.
If you register an nsIObserver, e.g., where content-document-global-created is the topic, and then unwrap the subject, you can inject your global (see this if you need to inject something more sophisticated like an object with methods).
Here is some (untested) code which should do the trick:
var observerService = Cc['#mozilla.org/observer-service;1'].getService(Ci.nsIObserverService);
observerService.addObserver({observe: function (subject, topic, data) {
var unsafeWindow = XPCNativeWrapper.unwrap(subject);
unsafeWindow.myGlobal = true;
}}, 'content-document-global-created', false);
See this and this if you want an apparently easier way in an SDK add-on (not sure whether SDK postMessage communication would work as an alternative but with the apparently same concern that this would be exposed to non-bookmarklet contexts (i.e., regular websites) as well).

Resources