Chat widget with react.js - javascript

I am writing a chat widget, that would be distributed to the end users with little code to put in their website. Usual routine.
My widget is going to be written in React. I know several ways to achieve this. Let me list the ways that I could think of.
Give a code snippet with directly iframe and source url in it. Problem with this approach is, it can be used only if the widget is embed. If the widget needs to be popup, flexibility will be lost.
Give a code snippet with a javascript being loaded asynchronously. Javascript will create an iframe in the parent webpage and src can be set. This widget javascript can have little intelligence. This is the usual approach followed by most of the widget developers.
Of course, source URL will render a React page which is bundled by webpack, in either case.
I wanted to know the best practices of developing a widget. So I went through the popular implementations of it. I liked Intercom's widget very much. It is written in React. I analyzed how it works.
The minimal javascript is loaded async on the webpage. It is injecting an iframe with id intercom-frame. That iframe has a script in it's head with a source URl. Obviously it is React bundle.
The thing that I don't understand is, below this iframe, a div is created with three iframes in it. One to show the chat bubble, another to show the chat bubble icon, the last one to show the actual chat window. Those iframe doesn't have source url and I guess the bundle is served from the first iframe created by the widget javascript.
I came across this SO question, which partially answers my question. From the answer,
expose some API between your customer webpage and your iframe, using window messaging.
the main code (the iframe code) is then loaded by this first script
asynchronously, and not included in it.
What I don't understand is,
1.) How they would have achieved it with window messaging?
2.) How they would have managed to create a div with iframes in it, from another iframes script?. Widget javascript is not creating those elements, based on it's source. It should have been done by the React bundle in the iframe generated by widget js.
3.) How a react bundle inside an iframe can create react elements in the parent DOM?

None of the iframe created by Intercom's script has src attribute, that means they are not subject to the same origin policy. Therefore, they can modify parent page html and vice versa.
However, I don't understand why they need to have separate iframe. And why using a script to inject another script which inject the main html content. Doesn't the first script have enough ability to inject html content? I'd love to be lightened about these things.

Related

How can I include an external script in my ReactJS app?

I have a React JS app where, on a specific pages, I show different job offers, one by one, tinder style. My client asked me to put one "widget" from an external website on the job offer. The widget is a "div" with an external script from another website. This script is a bunch of "document.write", not even a selector for the div... Small problem: the script isn't called, so the relevant code isn't added inside the div.
How can I make sure that a tag I dynamically add will execute it's code? It doesn't even seem to get loaded in the "Network" tab of the website. The with the script inside is down a bunch of React components.
Anyone has an idea on how I can make the script load even if it's dynamically added?

Can I insert HTML into a page via a file, and then interact with those DOM elements with JavaScript?

I'm building a Chrome Extension.
The extension injects some CSS and JavaScript when .html files on the users local drive are loaded in the browser (file:///).
My extension adds an extensive UI to the page that allows the user to modify and manipulate the original source code from their .html file.
The primary purpose of the extension is debugging and QAing HTML email newsletters. Here's just a few things that it does:
Checking links for the appropriate parameters.
Toggling images off and on to simulate popular email clients.
Displaying the source code side-by-side to show a desktop view and multiple mobile sized views.
A function that takes the original HTML and generates a plain text version.
A function that toggles <style> blocks off and on to simulate popular email clients ignoring them.
Email files are backed up via Dropbox and the Dropbox API is integrated to allow for quick sharing right from the email newsletter.
Until now I've been using javascript in my injected content script like this to create all of my menu items.
var debugOrb = document.createElement("div");
debugOrb.id = "borders-orb";
debugOrb.className = "borders-orb orb glyph";
debugOrb.addEventListener("click", toggleBorders, false);
orbsBottom.appendChild(debugOrb);
Here's an extended view of the code I've written to create all of these toggles/menu items: http://pastebin.com/LQTkNhpP
My problem is that now I'm going to be adding a LOT more clickable menu items like this. And it feels like if I do, it's going to get out of hand really quick. Especially since I'll be nesting a lot of divs to make the whole thing look organized and using JavaScript to create lots of text nodes too.
My first thought was what if I could just create my entire menu in regular HTML, then just inject that file into the page with the javascript in my content script. I'm barely intermediate level with JavaScript though. And as I understand it, if I did this, I'd lose my ability to use onclick handlers for all of these divs I'm creating.
Is there an efficient way to handle my goal that I'm not aware of?
Notes:
I'm not using any framework/plugins like React, Angular, or jQuery.
Once the html is added you can always get the element by id and then add an event listener to that element. You can have functions relate to the divs and then onload create the event listeners. element.addEventListener ('click', function);

How to sandbox a div element?

I am trying to build a content editor. This contenteditor will load a HTML document (with JavaScript) into for example a #result element. The problem with this, is that if inside this HTML element there is for example $("input").hide();, then all of my inputs are gone throughout the whole page, so not just inside the loaded HTML (my goal).
What I want to do with the editor is when a client clicks on an element that represents something in the database, the info of this element will popup and the user will be able to edit this. (So, if a user hovers over a form with the class "contact-form" (which is in the database, connected to the loaded page) a new window will popup with information about this specific form element.
Also, I cannot completely disable Javascript, since the loaded HTML might contain Javascript for styling etc.
My goal: Remove Javascript, that can be annoying when a user loads in an HTML file. Like an alert(); Also, remove the ability for the Javascript to edit somehthing outside it's own DOM.
P.S. I am open to better workarounds like using an iframe for this, BUT I want to be able to hover over elements in interact with them.
Edit: It seems that this question might be a bit too broad, looking at the comments. Summary of my question: How can I disable alert() for a specific div and how can I create a sandbox so that code inside a div, can only change elements from inside that div.
What you're looking for is HTML sanitization. This is the process by which you remove any dangerous content from a snippet of HTML on the server, before it's loaded in the browser. There are plenty of sanitization libraries out there that can strip script tags, object tags, etc. Just remember, you can't sanitize using javascript because by the time you've injected your script, another malicious script may have already loaded and run.
The only way to effectively sandbox a javascript environment is with iframes. You'll notice that websites like CodePen, JSBin and JSFiddle use them extensively. There's something called the ShadowDOM, which is the basis of Web Components, but it isn't very well supported yet.
To make it possible to run your own frontend scripts that allow for hovering, you can inject your script after your sanitization process. This way, if it's loaded inside an iframe your script will also be loaded.
Finally, alert() doesn't belong to any elements on the DOM. You can trigger an alert as soon as the page loads, for example. However, if you're trying to prevent alerts from popping up on user interactions, you could try removing all event listeners from a particular element. This won't be necessary if you sanitize the HTML of script tags, however, since the script wouldn't have had a chance to load so there won't be any event listeners.
You can use ShadowDOM to load an html document into a host node. See also WHY SHADOW DOM?

Loading Content Into div - Resource Issue

I have a web component which another group wants to include in their web application.
They have asked that I render my page into theirs by rendering into a div. From my understanding they are going to provide an html page similar to this.
TheirComponenetPopupWindow.html
<html>
...
<script src="myscript.js"></script>
...
<div id='render_here'></div>
</html>
where myscript.js will be a script I will need to write.
Now, I have seen countless examples on stackoverflow where I can use $(#render_here).load(..) or $.ajax(..,{..}). However, all of these leave me with a serious problem. That all resources my page loads are now relative to the page I am being rendered into. This off course breaks my page as all of my scripts, images, and css files fail to load.
Is anyone aware of how I can use the methods mentioned above, or maybe a method I am unaware of, where I can render into a div and not break my resources?
You can try to create a iframe in the render_here div, and set the src of iframe with you page url.
You will need rewrite your code using absolute URLs if you want them to be portable to other locations such as a third party's site.
If you don't require interaction between your code and content on the third party page then an iframe would probably save you a lot of time and effort, but access to the third party's page would be prevented from within the iframe.

Editing Facebook Like-Box Css on The FLy?

I am not a coder but, i am able to get my way around code most of the time. However, i found that this is the best place to ask questions relating to code stuff.
I have been working on a website for a client and i am at 95% - the only problem i have is facebook like-box. i have found several tutorials on the web to modify the like box css, and i have implemented most of the recommendations but, i have no favorable results.
Please - stackoverflow help!
I know jquery/javascript is a very powerful language. And facebook like uses javascript iframe/xfbml.
what code would you use, if you were to modify the like box css elements before loading them .
I say load cos i am loading my like box via ".load" ajax. So, when a user clicks the facebook button jquery loads it.
In short: how would i edit a css file on the fly, and then load the edited version afterwards.
thanks
The key problem that you'll have here is that FB's Like button is loaded inside an iframe - a self-contained HTML document within your page (if you use firebug or webkit inspector to inspect the like button, you'll see it's within <body>, <html>, then <iframe>).
The thing about these self-contained pages is that you can't access or manipulate them from the surrounding document (your page). You can change the 'src' attribute (telling the iframe to load a new page), but you can't apply or change styles on the elements inside the page. This is a security limitation that browsers have.
I know that it is possible to have a custom-styled like button, but I don't think it's done with the iframe method.

Categories