Chrome extension: Send message from background script to *all* tabs

Question

Is there a way to have the background script inform all currently open tabs (i.e. their content scripts) that an event took place.

Something like the follow

Answer 1

The wildcard is not supported. The only way to reach all tabs is to query all existing tabs, and dispatch the message using chrome.tabs.sendMessage.

chrome.tabs.query({}, function(tabs) {
    var message = {foo: bar};
    for (var i=0; i<tabs.length; ++i) {
        chrome.tabs.sendMessage(tabs[i].id, message);
    }
});