How to get the url of the tab that is currently opened?

Question

I am trying to get the url of tab which is currently there and it should change as soon as I change my tab.My code is this:

var y;
    chrome.tabs.getSelected(null, function(tab) {
    alert("current:"+tab.url);
    y=tab.url;
});

The problem is it only gives the Url of the first page when I load the extension i.e chrome://extensions and doesn't change its value when I change the tabs .I know I am doing something wrong .I am new to this and probably not able to understand it properly.What to do?

I believe that is deprecated, see this for an answer -> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6132018/how-can-i-get-the-current-tab-url-for-chrome-extension — adeneo, Jul 20 '14 at 17:55
I know that's deprecated ,but even if i use current or query my question remains the same!! — user3668325, Jul 20 '14 at 18:00

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 20 '14 at 19:32

Your code is only run once; what do you expect?

You should register listeners to appropriate events to react to changes.

chrome.tabs.onActivated will tell you when tabs are switched.
chrome.tabs.onUpdated will, among other things, fire when the tab's URL changes.
You might also want to listen to chrome.windows.onFocusChanged

Example:

chrome.tabs.onActivated.addListener( function(activeInfo){
  chrome.tabs.get(activeInfo.tabId, function(tab){
    y = tab.url;
  });
});

All in all, give the docs another read.

How to get the url of the tab that is currently opened?

1 Answers1