How to reference the version information in a Google Chrome extension?

Question

I use

chrome.tabs.create({url:"URL here"})

to open a new tab in my LRG. To this URL I want to append the version number of the extension, which is specified in the manifest.json file:

"version": "1.2",

How can I access the version number in javascript at the time of creating the new tab?

Answer 1

Try in your extension:

chrome.app.getDetails().version

I don't know why it's not among other APIs but it works in my Chrome 13 beta. Rather test it in older versions of Chrome :).

EDIT: It's probably a little buggy

Answer 2

You can fetch your own manifest and the version by using the following:

var url = chrome.extension.getURL("manifest.json");
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.onreadystatechange = function(e) {
  if(xhr.readyState == 2 && xhr.status == 200) {
     var manifest = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);
     alert("Version: " + manifest.version);
  }
};

xhr.open("GET", url);
xhr.send();

Once you have the version number you can do your tab stuff that you need to do.