1653698 - Trigger identity event when the compose window first opens

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1675012

(Thunderbird :: Add-Ons: Extensions API, enhancement)

Description

[dreadnaut]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0

Steps to reproduce:

When the user opens a new compose window, Thunderbird will fill in the compose identity, but I don't think there is a way to be notified of this choice.

Actual results:

No event is raised.

Expected results:

Thunderbird could trigger the "compose-from-changed" event, so that any add-on listening on identity changes will be notified of the default selection.

In the specific case, I am working on BorderColors¹. I can update the identity color highlight when this changes thanks to #1642189, but this is only triggered when the user switches to a different identity. I have no way of setting the initial color for a new compose window.

[1] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-GB/thunderbird/addon/bordercolors-d/

Comment 1

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Could you not listen for the window.onCreated event?

Comment 2

[dreadnaut]

I'm not sure how I would go from a newly created "messageCompose" window to the editor tab and then the compose identity. There is no "tabs" array when the windows.onCreated event is called. If I listen to tabs.onCreated, I can go up to the window to check its type, but still the editor is not in place, so getComposeDetails() causes gives an error "editor is null -- ext-compose.js:179".

There might be an easy way I'm overlooking here :)

Comment 3

[dreadnaut]

Bumping this, as the issue is still open and I can't find a way around it. I cannot listen for windows.onCreated: when that event is triggered, the editor is not in place (even if the tab's status is "complete") so getComposeDetails() fails.

This snipped can be used to trigger the error:

browser.windows.onCreated.addListener(
  newWindow => findIdentity(newWindow)
);
async function findIdentity(newWindow) {
  if (newWindow.type == "messageCompose") {
    const tabs = await browser.tabs.query({ windowId: newWindow.id });
    console.log(`Trying to get the compose details for window ${newWindow.id}, tab ${tabs[0].id} (${tabs[0].status})`);
    const details = await browser.compose.getComposeDetails(tabs[0].id);
    console.log("New compose window with identity:", details.identityId);
  }
}

The trace points to "getComposeDetails chrome://messenger/content/parent/ext-compose.js:185" (205 in tip)

function getComposeDetails(composeWindow, extension) {
  let composeFields = composeWindow.GetComposeDetails();
  let editor = composeWindow.GetCurrentEditor();

  let details = {
    // ... (other fields here)
    // 🔥 fails here because editor is null
    body: editor.outputToString("text/html", 0),
    plainTextBody: editor.outputToString("text/plain", 0),
  };
  if (extension.hasPermission("accountsRead")) {
    details.identityId = composeWindow.getCurrentIdentityKey();
  }
  return details;
}

Comment 4

[John Bieling]

The editor not being ready has been fixed in bug 1675012. As long as that has not landed, you can wait a little after the event has fired and before you call getComposeDetails:
https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/addons/T877120d828ad8205-Meec3d6ea9d201ae6d48c11b8/error-in-getcomposedetails