How to Extract/Retrieve source code given URL in Firefox extention

Question

I\'m writing a Firefox extension that will analyze / parse the linked pages while the user is still on the current page. I know there are ways to retrieve the source code for th

Answer 1

Maybe the following JavaScript snippet will help you:

var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
req.open("GET", linkedPageUrl, false);
req.send(null);
DoSomethingWithGivenSource(req.responseText);

This works synchronously. So after req.send(null) is executed, req.responseText contains the page source code. Generally it is recommended to avoid synchronous network actions however so a better approach would be to use an asynchronous request and add a callback for the load event:

var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
req.open("GET", linkedPageUrl, true);
req.addEventListener("load", function()
{
  DoSomethingWithGivenSource(req.responseText);
}, false);
req.send(null);