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Cannot access urlbar in firefox addon

I cannot access urlbar in firefox addon

I can't access the urlbar object as a firefox add-on in any way, if I add it to permissions in the manifest.json firefox tells me "Invalid extension permission: urlbar", but if I request "tab" as permission, it shows me as property: 

Reading manifest: Warning processing permissions: Error processing permissions.1: Value "tab" must either: must either [must either [be one of [
      "clipboardRead",
      "clipboardWrite",
      "geolocation",
      "idle",
      "notifications"
    ], 
  /********* A LOTS OF PERMISSIONS ************/
  be one of [
    "urlbar" // <<< RIGHT HERE!!!
  ], be one of [
    "contextualIdentities"
  ], be one of [
    "dns"
  ],
  /********* A LOTS OF PERMISSIONS ************/
  be one of [
    "theme"
  ], or match the pattern /^experiments(\.\w+)+$/
], or must either [be one of [
    "<all_urls>"
  ], must either [match the pattern /^(https?|wss?|file|ftp|\*):\/\/(\*|\*\.[^*/
    ]+|[^*/
    ]+)\/.*$/, or match the pattern /^file:\/\/\/.*$/
  ], or match the pattern /^resource:\/\/(\*|\*\.[^*/
  ]+|[^*/
  ]+)\/.*$|^about:/
]

How do I access the urlbar? My intention is that after making a redirection of a fantasy url (like http://something.server.internal) redirect to another page (which I already do) but not change the url in the address bar. As an alternative I have thought of loading an iframe with the content of the page to be redirected but I cannot control the content of the page that does not exist.

Solution

  • The URL bar is not accessible WebExtensions addons. Instead there is the omnibox API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/omnibox

    But you don't need to use omnibox for redirections. Instead listeners for webRequest.onBeforeRequest can do that. See also: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/webRequest/onBeforeRequest#Examples