javascript - How to check if a tab has been reloaded in background.js?

Question

I am writing a Chrome extension which needs to detect if the tab has been reloaded, that is to say, the user refreshed the page (either by pressing the refresh button, or put a cursor behind the URL and press Enter) with no URL change. If it happens, then I will reinitialize my variables defined in background.js.

I am wondering how could I get this "is_reload" boolean value? I tried to make use of windows.performance.navigation.type, but it doesn't have any effect in the background.js.

Answer 1

Use webNavigation

The API to use from a script in the background context to determine when a page is actually reloaded, not just the URL being updated in-page without navigation, is webNavigation. You may want a webNavigation.onCommitted listener, which is the only event which has information as to why the page is navigating (transitionType and transitionQualifiers), but webNavigation.onDOMContentLoaded or webNavigation.onCompleted will also work, depending on what your actual needs are.

If your goal really is to determine that it's a reload, not just a load, you will either need to keep a record of the current URL for each tab and compare the new URL against the old one, or use the TransitionType Object contained in the webNavigation.onCommitted's transitionType property, which will explicitly declare it a "reload".

These are the events which occur when you reload a tab by clicking on the "reload this page" button:

webNavigation.onBeforeNavigate    ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"parentFrameId":-1,"processId":-1,"tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401223978.314,"url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onBeforeRequest        ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestId":"260870","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401223979.044,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onBeforeSendHeaders    ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestHeaders":[{"name":"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests","value":"1"},{"name":"User-Agent","value":"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.115 Safari/537.36"},{"name":"Accept","value":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8"},{"name":"Accept-Encoding","value":"gzip, deflate"},{"name":"Accept-Language","value":"en-US,en;q=0.8"}],"requestId":"260870","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401223979.3242,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onSendHeaders          ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestHeaders":[{"name":"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests","value":"1"},{"name":"User-Agent","value":"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.115 Safari/537.36"},{"name":"Accept","value":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8"},{"name":"Accept-Encoding","value":"gzip, deflate"},{"name":"Accept-Language","value":"en-US,en;q=0.8"}],"requestId":"260870","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401223979.538,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onHeadersReceived      ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestId":"260870","responseHeaders":[{"name":"Content-Encoding","value":"gzip"},{"name":"Accept-Ranges","value":"bytes"},{"name":"Cache-Control","value":"max-age=604800"},{"name":"Content-Type","value":"text/html"},{"name":"Date","value":"Tue, 18 Jul 2017 18:07:03 GMT"},{"name":"Etag","value":""359670651""},{"name":"Expires","value":"Tue, 25 Jul 2017 18:07:03 GMT"},{"name":"Last-Modified","value":"Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:54:35 GMT"},{"name":"Server","value":"ECS (rhv/818F)"},{"name":"Vary","value":"Accept-Encoding"},{"name":"X-Cache","value":"HIT"},{"name":"Content-Length","value":"606"}],"statusCode":200,"statusLine":"HTTP/1.1 200 OK","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401224072.296,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onResponseStarted      ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"fromCache":false,"ip":"93.184.216.34","method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestId":"260870","responseHeaders":[{"name":"Content-Encoding","value":"gzip"},{"name":"Accept-Ranges","value":"bytes"},{"name":"Cache-Control","value":"max-age=604800"},{"name":"Content-Type","value":"text/html"},{"name":"Date","value":"Tue, 18 Jul 2017 18:07:03 GMT"},{"name":"Etag","value":""359670651""},{"name":"Expires","value":"Tue, 25 Jul 2017 18:07:03 GMT"},{"name":"Last-Modified","value":"Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:54:35 GMT"},{"name":"Server","value":"ECS (rhv/818F)"},{"name":"Vary","value":"Accept-Encoding"},{"name":"X-Cache","value":"HIT"},{"name":"Content-Length","value":"606"}],"statusCode":200,"statusLine":"HTTP/1.1 200 OK","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401224072.5032,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onCompleted            ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"fromCache":false,"ip":"93.184.216.34","method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestId":"260870","responseHeaders":[{"name":"Content-Encoding","value":"gzip"},{"name":"Accept-Ranges","value":"bytes"},{"name":"Cache-Control","value":"max-age=604800"},{"name":"Content-Type","value":"text/html"},{"name":"Date","value":"Tue, 18 Jul 2017 18:07:03 GMT"},{"name":"Etag","value":""359670651""},{"name":"Expires","value":"Tue, 25 Jul 2017 18:07:03 GMT"},{"name":"Last-Modified","value":"Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:54:35 GMT"},{"name":"Server","value":"ECS (rhv/818F)"},{"name":"Vary","value":"Accept-Encoding"},{"name":"X-Cache","value":"HIT"},{"name":"Content-Length","value":"606"}],"statusCode":200,"statusLine":"HTTP/1.1 200 OK","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401224074.0261,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
tabs.onUpdated                    ->  arg[0]= 411 :: arg[1]= {"status":"loading","url":"http://www.example.com/"} :: arg[2]= {"active":true,"audible":false,"autoDiscardable":true,"discarded":false,"height":902,"highlighted":true,"id":411,"incognito":false,"index":1,"mutedInfo":{"muted":false},"pinned":false,"selected":true,"status":"loading","title":"www.example.com","url":"http://www.example.com/","width":1282,"windowId":10}    
tabs.onZoomChange                 ->  arg[0]= {"newZoomFactor":1,"oldZoomFactor":1,"tabId":411,"zoomSettings":{"mode":"automatic","scope":"per-origin"}}        
webNavigation.onCommitted         ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"processId":107,"tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401224079.4019,"transitionQualifiers":[],"transitionType":"reload","url":"http://www.example.com/"}
--->>Here is where you can tell it's a reload --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
history.onVisited                 ->  arg[0]= {"id":"42","lastVisitTime":1500401224077.579,"title":"Example Domain","typedCount":1,"url":"http://www.example.com/","visitCount":12}        
tabs.onUpdated                    ->  arg[0]= 411 :: arg[1]= {"title":"Example Domain"} :: arg[2]= {"active":true,"audible":false,"autoDiscardable":true,"discarded":false,"height":902,"highlighted":true,"id":411,"incognito":false,"index":1,"mutedInfo":{"muted":false},"pinned":false,"selected":true,"status":"loading","title":"Example Domain","url":"http://www.example.com/","width":1282,"windowId":10}    
webNavigation.onDOMContentLoaded  ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"processId":107,"tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401224093.404,"url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webNavigation.onCompleted         ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"processId":107,"tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500401224094.768,"url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
tabs.onUpdated                    ->  arg[0]= 411 :: arg[1]= {"status":"complete"} :: arg[2]= {"active":true,"audible":false,"autoDiscardable":true,"discarded":false,"height":902,"highlighted":true,"id":411,"incognito":false,"index":1,"mutedInfo":{"muted":false},"pinned":false,"selected":true,"status":"complete","title":"Example Domain","url":"http://www.example.com/","width":1282,"windowId":10}   

Here are the events for when the user selects the address bar and hits Enter:

webNavigation.onBeforeNavigate   ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"parentFrameId":-1,"processId":-1,"tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500403090082.833,"url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onBeforeRequest       ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestId":"261350","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500403090083.163,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onBeforeSendHeaders   ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestHeaders":[{"name":"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests","value":"1"},{"name":"User-Agent","value":"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.115 Safari/537.36"},{"name":"Accept","value":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8"},{"name":"Accept-Encoding","value":"gzip, deflate"},{"name":"Accept-Language","value":"en-US,en;q=0.8"}],"requestId":"261350","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500403090083.3289,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onSendHeaders         ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestHeaders":[{"name":"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests","value":"1"},{"name":"User-Agent","value":"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.115 Safari/537.36"},{"name":"Accept","value":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8"},{"name":"Accept-Encoding","value":"gzip, deflate"},{"name":"Accept-Language","value":"en-US,en;q=0.8"}],"requestId":"261350","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500403090083.4739,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onHeadersReceived     ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestId":"261350","responseHeaders":[{"name":"Accept-Ranges","value":"bytes"},{"name":"Cache-Control","value":"max-age=604800"},{"name":"Date","value":"Tue, 18 Jul 2017 18:38:09 GMT"},{"name":"Expires","value":"Tue, 25 Jul 2017 18:38:09 GMT"},{"name":"Last-Modified","value":"Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:54:35 GMT"},{"name":"Server","value":"ECS (rhv/818F)"},{"name":"Vary","value":"Accept-Encoding"},{"name":"X-Cache","value":"HIT"},{"name":"Content-Encoding","value":"gzip"},{"name":"Content-Type","value":"text/html"},{"name":"Etag","value":""359670651""},{"name":"Content-Length","value":"606"}],"statusCode":200,"statusLine":"HTTP/1.1 200 OK","tabId":411,"timeStamp":1500403090130.209,"type":"main_frame","url":"http://www.example.com/"}        
webRequest.onResponseStarted     ->  arg[0]= {"frameId":0,"fromCache":true,"ip":"93.184.216.34","method":"GET","parentFrameId":-1,"requestId":"261350","responseHeaders":[{"name":"Accept-Ranges","value":"bytes"},{"name":"Cache-Control","value":"max-age=604800"},{"name":"Date","value":"Tue, 18 Jul 2017 18:38:09 GMT"},{"name":"Expires","value":"Tue, 25 Jul 2017 18:38:09 GMT"},{"name":"Last-Modified","value":"Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:54:35 GMT"},{"name":"Server","value":"ECS (rhv/818F)"},{"name":"Vary","value":"Accept-Encoding"},{"name":"X-Cache","value":"HIT"},{"name":"Content-Encoding","value":"gzip"},{"name":"Content-Type","valu