Intercepting Links in Firefox

While working on a Firefox extension I needed to intercept links Firefox is about to open and stop it on certain conditions. While it seems like an easy task it took more time then I thought due to not much information was available online. I saw the question asked multiple times with no definitive answer. Correct recipe turns out to be using a observer and listen for an "http-on-examine-response".

Following script will listen all request and you will have a chance to stop the transmission based on your rules. 

var observer = {
    observe: function(subject,topic,data){

        var httpChannel = 
            subject.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIHttpChannel);
        var contentType = httpChannel.getResponseHeader("Content-Type");

        var channel = subject.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIChannel);
        var url = channel.URI.spec;
        url = url.toString();

        if ( isDownloadable( url ) == true 
             &&  contentType.indexOf("html") == -1 ){

            window.getBrowser().stop();

            download( url );
        }
    }
};

var observerService =
    Components.classes["@mozilla.org/observer-service;1"]
    .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIObserverService);
observerService.addObserver(observer,"http-on-examine-response",false);

I am no extension guru, so maybe it is not the best way to do it but it gets the job done.

Tags: firefox javascript