addon-navigate

Addon-SDK module to navigate the browser to a list of URLs, one after the other. Use new Handler(urls, options, callbacks) to instantiate the navigator, then call handler.start().

Features supported out of the box through options:

• times: Load the same site N times, recording load times and logging all js errors. (default=1)
• errors: give up visiting a site after N timeouts (default=1)
• timeout: number of seconds to wait for the load event before recording an error. (default=10)
• loadDelay: after the load event, wait another N seconds before performing further analysis and navigating to the next page. (default=0)
• random: if true, pick a new site at random. Otherwise, go sequentially. (default=true)
• abTesting: A/B testing support. Load the same site twice, turning a specific feature on and off (default=false)

The behavior can be modified by defining optional callbacks on the handler object:

• extraPrefs(prefs): use the prefs module to modify preferences before the navigation is started.
• extraGlobals(w, cloneF): for each site, add properties on every site's global object (w) before any javascript code runs.
• extraProperties(site): add properties to a site before visiting it and recording any statistic, called only once.
• beforeOpen(): modify a site object right before the site is visited, called each time.
• beforeClose(tab): modify a site object right before the page is closed. this gives you access to the page (TODO: give something better than tab) for examination.
• turnOn/turnOff(): called during A/B testing to turn the feature on and off respectively.
• end(): called when all sites have been visited.

These methods have access to the following instance properties:

• this.sites: the current state of all sites.
• this.site: the current site being visited.
• this.half: the current site.(on|off) being visited. If abTesting is false, this will always be equal to this.site.on.

Note that these are not always defined. For example, this.site is not available in end().

Usage

var {navigate} = require("addon-navigate");
var prefs = require("sdk/preferences/service");

var n = new Navigator(["http://www.google.com", ...], {
  times: 10,
  errors: 4,
  loadDelay: 2,
  random: false,
  abtesting: true,
}, {
  end: function() {
    console.log("result", this.sites);
  },
  extraGlobals: function(w, cloneF) {
    // simple properties can be defined directly
    w.__debug = true;
    // cloneF is a shorthand to define functions using Cu.cloneInto
    cloneF(msg => console.log(msg), w, "alert");
  },
  turnOn: function() {
    prefs.set("my.feature.enabled", true);
  },
  turnOff: function() {
    prefs.set("my.feature.enabled", false);
  },
});