Get selected text in a chrome extension

Question

I wanna make an extension that takes the selected text and searches it in google translate but I can\'t figure out how to get the selected text.

Here is my manifest.

Answer 1

You are making it a bit more complicated than it really is. You don't need to use a message between the content script and background page because the contextMenus.create method already can capture selected text. Try adjusting your creations script to something like:

chrome.contextMenus.create({title:"Translate '%s'",contexts: ["all"], "onclick": onRequest});

Then adjust your function to simply get the info.selectionText:

function onRequest(info, tab) {
var selection = info.selectionText;
//do something with the selection
};

Please note if you want to remotely access an external site like google translate you may need to adjust your permissions settings.