Can we refer to JavaScript variables across webpages in a browser session?
Going through w3schools tutorial for JavaScript, found below statement:
A global variable has global scope: All scripts and functions on a web page can access it.
So, my query is, do we have a way to refer to variables declared in a particular webpage?
For example, in C, we have extern keyword, using which we can access the variables which are declared in another file, but we can refer to it in our file.
For example:
Inside script tag of fileA.html, we have declared var x = 50
, outside function()
declaration, so it is global w.r.t fileA.html.
If I have fileB.html, can we refer to x from within script tag embodied in fileB.html?
Just to be clear, this is not a scenario of reusing JavaScript files across webpages.
You can use Web Workers
; MessageChannel
, see How to clear the contents of an iFrame from another iFrame ; or window.postMessage()
to communicate or pass variables between browsing contexts.
An approach utilizing SharedWorker
fileA.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="scriptA.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<a href="fileB.html" target="_blank">fileB</a>
</body>
</html>
scriptA.js
var x = 50, p;
var worker = new SharedWorker("worker.js");
worker.port.addEventListener("message", function(e) {
alert(e.data);
if (!p) {
p = document.createElement("p");
p.innerHTML = e.data;
document.body.appendChild(p)
}
}, false);
worker.port.start();
console.log("Calling the worker from fileA")
worker.port.postMessage(x); // post `50` to worker
fileB.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
<script src="scriptB.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
scriptB.js
var x, p;
var worker = new SharedWorker("worker.js");
worker.port.addEventListener("message", function(e) {
if (!x && !p) {
x = e.data; // at `connections`:`1` : `e.data`:`50`
p = document.createElement("p");
p.innerHTML = "Message from fileA:" + x;
document.body.appendChild(p)
}
}, false);
worker.port.start();
console.log("Calling the worker from fileB");
worker.port.postMessage("");
worker.js
self.x = null, connections = 0;
onconnect = function(e) {
var port = e.ports[0];
++connections;
port.addEventListener("message", function(e) {
if (!self.x) {
self.x = e.data;
port.postMessage("Received:" + self.x
+ " from fileA, total connections:"
+ connections);
} else {
port.postMessage("fileB received:" + self.x
+ " total connections:"
+ connections);
}
});
port.start();
}