Chrome Tab Extensions: getCurrent vs. getSelected?

Question

I'm writing a Chrome extension. As part of the extension, I want to get the URL of the tab that the extension was called from. What's the difference between using:

chrome.tabs.getSelected(null, function(tab) { var myTabUrl = tab.url; });

and

chrome.tabs.getCurrent(function(tab) { var myTabUrl = tab.url; });

?

Answer 1

Method chrome.tabs.getSelected has been deprecated. You should use chrome.tabs.query instead now.

You can't find the official doc for obsolete method chrome.tabs.getSelected. Here is the doc for method chrome.tabs.query.

Answer 2

getCurrent should be what you need, getSelected is a tab that is currently selected in a browser. When they could be different - maybe your extension runs some background cronjob in tabs, so that tab could be not currently selected by a user.

Ok I got it all wrong apparently. getCurrent should be used only inside extension's own pages that have a tab associated with them (options.html for example), you can't use it from a background or popup page. getSelected is a tab that is currently selected in a browser.

As to your original question - you probably need neither of those two. If you are sending a request from a content script to a background page, then the tab this request is being made from is passed as a sender parameter.