Chrome Extension get selected text

Question

I am looking for a way to get the selected text into my Chrome extension.

I want to ex. select a text in facebook feed and when I click my icon it will get it and show the selected text in my Extension.

I got this so far:

chrome.tabs.executeScript(null, {
  code: "alert(window.getSelection().toString());"
})

it gets the selected text and alert it with a message in Chrome. However I want to show it in my html popup. I want to write it out like this:

document.getElementById("output").value = "Selected text here(but how)"

Need help! and I know there is other question about this, but they didn't give me exactly what I want..

Answer 1

You can use the last expression evaluated by the executed code in a callback function:

chrome.tabs.executeScript( {
  code: "window.getSelection().toString();"
}, function(selection) {
  document.getElementById("output").value = selection[0];
});

Answer 2

You can do this by using Extensions Messaging. Basically, your "background page" will send the request to your service. For example, lets say you have a "popup" and once you click on it, it will do a "Google search" which is your service.

chrome.extension.onRequest.addListener(function(request, sender, sendResponse) {
    if (request.method == "getSelection")
      sendResponse({data: window.getSelection().toString()});
    else
      sendResponse({}); // snub them.
});

Some References

1. Creating a chrome extension which takes highlighted text on the page and inserts it into a textarea in popup.html

Or you can use this plugin

2. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/view-selection-source/fbhgckgfljgjkkfngcoeajbgndkeoaaj