Chrome Extension - Get entire text content of the current tab

Question

I'm developing an extension where I need to get the entire text content on the current tab. Now I've a plugin which retrieves selected text from the current tab. So, in essence I'm looking for the ctrl-A version of it :). This is what I've done so far taking the hint from @Derek.

This is in my event handler(this is just one, there are other listeners too for onUpdated etc):

chrome.tabs.onSelectionChanged.addListener(function(tabId,changeInfo,tab) {
  chrome.tabs.getSelected(null,function(tab) {
    chrome.tabs.sendRequest(tab.id, {method: "getSelection"}, function (response) {
      selectedtext = response.data;
    });
    chrome.tabs.sendRequest(tab.id, {method: "getText"}, function (response) {
      alltext = response.data;
    });
  });
});

This is what I've written in the content script:

chrome.extension.onRequest.addListener(function(request, sender, sendResponse) {
  if (request.method == "getSelection")
    sendResponse({data: window.getSelection().toString()});
  else if (request.method == "getText")
    sendResponse({data: document.body.innerText});
  else 
    sendResponse({});
});

However the document.body.innerText is returning undefined. I need the entire text of the current tab in alltext. Can someone help me out on this? Thanks.

Derek 朕會功夫 · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-22T22:43:52.697

You can use document.body.innerText or document.all[0].innerText to do it in the content script.
It will get all the text content in the page, without any HTML code.

Or you can use document.all[0].outerHTML to get the HTML of the whole page.

Example

In the Content Script

function getText(){
    return document.body.innerText
}
function getHTML(){
    return document.body.outerHTML
}
console.log(getText());             //Gives you all the text on the page
console.log(getHTML());             //Gives you the whole HTML of the page

Added

So you want the content script to return the text to the popup. You can use:

chrome.tabs.getSelected to get the tab selected,
chrome.tabs.sendRequest to send request to the content script,
and chrome.extension.onRequest.addListener to listen to requests.

Popup page

chrome.tabs.getSelected(null, function(tab) {
    chrome.tabs.sendRequest(tab.id, {method: "getText"}, function(response) {
        if(response.method=="getText"){
            alltext = response.data;
        }
    });
});

Content Script

chrome.extension.onRequest.addListener(
    function(request, sender, sendResponse) {
        if(request.method == "getText"){
            sendResponse({data: document.all[0].innerText, method: "getText"}); //same as innerText
        }
    }
);

This should work.

thanks @derek for the quick reply... but i'm not able to call this from inside popup.html where i need the text... sorry if this is something trivial that i'm messing up, i'm still kind of a novice... — ananthv, Dec 14 '11 at 05:53
i should also mention that i need it from the current tab that has been selected/opened... — ananthv, Dec 14 '11 at 06:39
For anyone reading this, Request is now deprecated in favor of Message: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13709409/is-chrome-extension-onrequest-deprecated — Tomás Fox, Jul 07 '14 at 16:37

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 10 '19 at 15:08

Use executeScript: (requires permission activeTab)

chrome.tabs.executeScript(null, {
    code: `document.all[0].innerText`,
    allFrames: false, // this is the default
    runAt: 'document_start', // default is document_idle. See https://stackoverflow.com/q/42509273 for more details.
}, function(results) {
    // results.length must be 1
    var result = results[0];
    process_result(result);
});

In case the code is complex, it's possible to define a function in the content script and call that function in the code (or use file).

Chrome Extension - Get entire text content of the current tab

2 Answers2

Example

Added

Linked