Javascript callback when IFRAME is finished loading?

Question

First up, going by the function name xssRequest it sounds like you're trying cross site request - which if that's right, you're not going to be able to read the contents of the iframe.

On the other hand, if the iframe's URL is on your domain you can access the body, but I've found that if I use a timeout to remove the iframe the callback works fine:

// possibly excessive use of jQuery - but I've got a live working example in production
$('#myUniqueID').load(function () {
  if (typeof callback == 'function') {
    callback($('body', this.contentWindow.document).html());
  }
  setTimeout(function () {$('#frameId').remove();}, 50);
});

I am using jQuery and surprisingly this seems to load as I just tested and loaded a heavy page and I didn't get the alert for a few seconds until I saw the iframe load:

$('#the_iframe').load(function(){
    alert('loaded!');
});

So if you don't want to use jQuery take a look at their source code and see if this function behaves differently with iframe DOM elements, I will look at it myself later as I am interested and post here. Also I only tested in the latest chrome.

I have had to do this in cases where documents such as word docs and pdfs were being streamed to the iframe and found a solution that works pretty well. The key is handling the onreadystatechanged event on the iframe.

Lets say the name of your frame is "myIframe". First somewhere in your code startup (I do it inline any where after the iframe) add something like this to register the event handler:

document.getElementById('myIframe').onreadystatechange = MyIframeReadyStateChanged;

I was not able to use an onreadystatechage attribute on the iframe, I can't remember why, but the app had to work in IE 7 and Safari 3, so that may of been a factor.

Here is an example of a how to get the complete state:

function MyIframeReadyStateChanged()
{
    if(document.getElementById('myIframe').readyState == 'complete')
    {
        // Do your complete stuff here.
    }
}

The innerHTML of your iframe is blank because your iframe tag doesn't surround any content in the parent document. In order to get the content from the page referred to by the iframe's src attribute, you need to access the iframe's contentDocument property. An exception will be thrown if the src is from a different domain though. This is a security feature that prevents you from executing arbitrary JavaScript on someone else's page, which would create a cross-site scripting vulnerability. Here is some example code the illustrates what I'm talking about:

<script src="http://prototypejs.org/assets/2009/8/31/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<h1>Parent</h1>

<script type="text/javascript">
function on_load(iframe) {
  try {
    // Displays the first 50 chars in the innerHTML of the
    // body of the page that the iframe is showing.
    // EDIT 2012-04-17: for wider support, fallback to contentWindow.document
    var doc = iframe.contentDocument || iframe.contentWindow.document;
    alert(doc.body.innerHTML.substring(0, 50));
  } catch (e) {
    // This can happen if the src of the iframe is
    // on another domain
    alert('exception: ' + e);
  }
}
</script>
<iframe id="child" src="iframe_content.html" onload="on_load(this)"></iframe>

To further the example, try using this as the content of the iframe:

<h1>Child</h1>

<a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>

<p>Use the preceeding link to change the src of the iframe
to see what happens when the src domain is different from
that of the parent page</p>

I wanted to hide the waiting spinner div when the i frame content is fully loaded on IE, i tried literally every solution mentioned in Stackoverflow.Com, but with nothing worked as i wanted.

Then i had an idea, that when the i frame content is fully loaded, the $(Window ) load event might be fired. And that exactly what happened. So, i wrote this small script, and worked like magic:

     $(window).load(function () {
     //alert("Done window ready ");
     var lblWait = document.getElementById("lblWait");
     if (lblWait != null ) {
         lblWait.style.visibility = "false";
         document.getElementById("divWait").style.display = "none";
     }
 });

Hope this helps.