Actions on page reload/refresh in JavaScript

Question

Hi

What I want to do is trigger a function from an extension/GM Script once a page in FireFox reloads/refreshes...

Picture this:

1. I goto a webpage that asks for a username and password.
2. My code populates these values and submits the credentials
3. The webpage reloads and brings up a page asking me to enter a pre-decided number
4. I enter the number
5. The webpage reloads and brings up a page asking me to select an option from a dropdown
6. I select ... .. you get the idea..

I figured I wanted to write some JavaScript to do all this.. and since persistence would be required and I don't have capability to change the source site, I thought of writing a FireFox extension or GreaseMonkey - basically anything on the client side.

Something like that the event DOMContentReloaded would have acted like (had it existed) :

addEventListener("DOMContentReloaded", pageReloaded, false);

Typical test cases for such code would be to:

1. Find out how much time it took between page refreshes
2. Wait for the second instance of page refresh to happen and then redirect to another page ,etc ..

All this would be done from a FireFox extension (or GreaseMonkey in case a slution in GM would be easier/better/recommended) - given this, things should be easy?

Answer 1

I do not think there is any way of preserving you JavaScript through refreshing the page in browser - it then loads it all again...

Maybe you can start with window.onbeforeunload to overload default function of reload button and use AJAX to reload some main div...

Answer 2

Assigning window.onbeforeunload would be a workable solution had it not fired when the page is closed too!

Any more suggestions .. maybe FF Extension or GM Script specific?

Answer 3

Use window.name or document.cookie - both properties will survive a refresh of the page.

Answer 4

919756 If you succeed, TC staff will catch and ban you. Wonder how I knew? hmmmmm...