dhowe / adnauseam-chrome Goto Github PK

Keeping a list of next steps here (though each will be a separate issue):

• PageVisitor (#4): Visit URLs in a hidden tab/window that is invisible to the user
• Logger (#3) : A simple logger that writes JSON-formatted messages to a file
• RequestHandler (#2): Listens-for and examines incoming/outgoing requests, handles cookies/headers
• AdBlock Integration (#5): Need to override at least one function in an (unmodified) adblocker

This entity should handle registering, de-registering, and listening for request-related events.

The equivalent events in Firefox are "http-on-modify-request" and "http-on-examine-response".

It needs to be able to read and modify cookies and headers for all requests.

It also needs to be able to distinguish whether requests are generated by ADN; that is, whether they have come from AdNauseam's hidden tab/window.

A simple logger that writes JSON-formatted messages to a file (generally adnauseam.log, which it should create if not existing). It should have functions like:

Logger.log(); // should take msg, object or multiple of either
Logger.warn(); // should take msg, exception or both
Logger.err(); // should take msg, exception or both
Logger.dispose(); // cleanup the logger on shutdown
Logger.deleteLog();

Visit URLs in a hidden tab/window invisible to user.

In FF, we use the page-worker API for this. In Chrome we may need to create and manage an iframe on the background page (though I really hope there's a nicer way to do this). Another option might be this.

• Step 1: Visit a URL and load the returning page in a hidden tab/window/iframe
• Step 2: Store a list of URLs to be visited, trying each one on a timer (only one should be in-process at a time)
• Step 3: Handle failures -- on failure, the URL should be visited again after a pause; after the 3rd failure, give-up
• Step 4: Harden -- disable JS, Flash, plugins, popups, etc on returned page

Need to override at least one function in an (unmodified) adblocker.

This is tricky if not impossible (any Chrome gurus want to weigh in on this?) when the adblocker does not expose a public API, as Adblock Plus does in the FF case. Which means we may end up needing to fork a version of an existing adblocker... at which point it may be easier to just package ADN as a single extension, rather than using the 2-install model we have for FF.

That question aside, one option that looks promising, though we would need to check licensing, is AdBlock. See links to source below. At first glance, it appears that replacing/overriding elementPurger.onPurgeRequest() does what we need...

svn:  http://adblockforchrome.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ adblockforchrome-read-only
releases: http://code.getadblock.com/releases/

Some info on cross-extension messaging