833791 - [Session Manager] Session Manager API

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

Design and implement an API that may be used to obtain the current state of the session (windows, tabs, history, forms, dom session store, scrolling position, etc.) for the following purposes:
- saving the current session to disk, e.g. for data recovery;
- extracting data that may be sent across the wire, e.g. for Sync;
- additional manipulation by add-ons.

Comment 1

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

We desire the following properties from this API:
- asynchronous;
- well-documented (e.g. no returning "JSON blobs);
- suited for a fast implementation;
- minimal.

Comment 2

[David Teller [:Yoric] - still alive but not very active]

Attachment: Early draft

I am really not satisfied with this draft, but let's give it a try.

Comment 3

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

It would be helpful if you can use MessageManager to communicate with the content window so we can use this in B2G and other things that might need session restore and use e10s.

Comment 4

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

(In reply to Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (Mozilla Corporation) from comment #3)
> It would be helpful if you can use MessageManager to communicate with the
> content window so we can use this in B2G and other things that might need
> session restore and use e10s.

That means we'd have a session manager content script in every browser window that listens for messages and restores a given state or returns the current one. Sounds reasonable to me.

Comment 5

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

It sounds less reasonable to me when you put it that way :-).

If you need to monitor pretty much all form control state changes, maybe your API should be baked into Gecko.

Comment 6

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

Comment on attachment 705376 [details]
Early draft

Seems like a big rewrite is currently off the table to grab some lower hanging fruits in combination with progressing towards e10s compatibility.

Comment 7

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 156 votes.
:dao, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 8

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.