feat: add excludeUrls and modify urls in WebRequestFilter for better URL filtering

[alicelovescake]

Description of Change

This PR introduces the following properties to the WebRequestFilter object:

• excludeUrls property. Specify URL patterns that should be excluded from matching.
• add deprecation message to existing urls property if it contains an empty array.

Why add excludeUrls?

Previously, the WebRequestFilter object only supported the urls property, which allowed developers to specify patterns for URLs that should be matched. However, there was no straightforward way to exclude certain URLs from being matched. This limitation made it challenging to implement filtering logic where certain URLs needed to be explicitly excluded.

Why add deprecation message to urls property with empty array?

Previously, an empty urls array meant all URLs were included. This doesn't make sense. If the developer wants all urls included, they should use all_urls, which is a special URL pattern that matches everything.

Changes

New Property: excludeUrls (optional)

Developers can now define urls and excludeUrls in their WebRequestFilter objects. The filtering logic will first check if a request matches any pattern in excludeUrls. If it does, the request will be excluded. If not, the request will be checked against the urls patterns.

const filter = {
 urls: ['https://example.com/*'],
 excludeUrls: ['https://example.com/exclude/*']
};

session.webRequest.onBeforeRequest(filter, (details, callback) => {
  // Handle the request with all urls from example.com except ones that end with exclude
});

const filter2 = {
  urls: ['<all_urls>'],
  excludeUrls: ['https://example.com/*']
};

Tests

Deprecation warning

Checklist

• PR description included and stakeholders cc'd
• npm test passes
• tests are changed or added
• relevant documentation, tutorials, templates and examples are changed or added
• PR release notes describe the change in a way relevant to app developers, and are capitalized, punctuated, and past tense.

Release Notes

Notes: Added excludeUrls to webRequest filter and deprecated the use of empty arrays in urls property.

[alicelovescake]

@miniak Tagging you in this PR because you recently added types to the filter! Open to any feedback! 🙇‍♀️

[erickzhao]

API LGTM

The rationale seems very clear to me and I think having an <all-urls> special value that aligns with the web standard is a cleaner way to have a catch-all value than the empty array approach from the previous API.

[samuelmaddock]

excludeUrls looks good 👍 I have thoughts about following established standards which I left feedback for.

[itsananderson]

Small nit: The PR description uses <all-urls> but the PR body uses <all_urls>.

The deprecation warning seems like something worth calling out in the breaking changes doc. I think maybe as a "Default Changed" breaking change?

[samuelmaddock]

API LGTM

[release-clerk]

Release Notes Persisted

Added excludeUrls to webRequest filter and deprecated the use of empty arrays in urls property.

[trop]

I was unable to backport this PR to "35-x-y" cleanly;
you will need to perform this backport manually.

[trop]

@alicelovescake has manually backported this PR to "35-x-y", please check out #45678