dom - inject a javascript function into an Iframe

Question

This link (archived version) describes how to inject code from a script into an iframe:

function injectJS() {
  var iFrameHead = window.frames["myiframe"].document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];
  var myscript = document.createElement('script');
  myscript.type = 'text/javascript';
  myscript.src = 'myscript.js'; // replace this with your SCRIPT
  iFrameHead.appendChild(myscript);
}

That's ok, but what if I want to insert a function object into an iframe and get it executed in the iframe context? Let's say I have:

function foo () {
    console.log ("Look at me, executed inside an iframe!", window);
}

and I want to insert foo's code inside an iframe? (function foo could be something loaded dynamically, I can't just wrap it in quotes)

I naively tried:

var scriptFooString = "<script>" + foo.toString() + "</script>"

to get the code inside function, but

• I don't know how to insert it in the iframe HEAD (maybe with jquery?)
• I don't know if it's the right way
• I don't know what happens when if function is way more complex than that
• I don't know what happens with double and single quotes in scriptFooString

Any hint?

Answer 1

First of all you can only accomplish this if your frame and the page displaying it is within the same domain (Due to cross-domain rules)

secondly you can manipulate dom and window objects of the frame directly through JS:

frames[0].window.foo = function(){
   console.log ("Look at me, executed inside an iframe!", window);
}

to get your frame from a DOMElement object you can use:

var myFrame = document.getElementById('myFrame');

myFrame.contentWindow.foo = function(){
       console.log ("Look at me, executed inside an iframe!");
}

Note that the scope in foo is NOT changed, so window is still the parent window etc. inside foo.

If you want to inject some code that needs to be run in the context of the other frame you could inject a script tag, or eval it:

frames[0].window.eval('function foo(){ console.log("Im in a frame",window); }');

Though the general consensus is to never use eval, I think its a better alternative than DOM injection if you REALLY need to accomplish this.

So in your specific case you could do something like:

frames[0].window.eval(foo.toString());