How to reload a chrome extension automatically? [duplicate]

Question

I am developing a chrome extension, and I found that there are repeating useless manual reloading works.

When you save a file, you have to refresh the chrome:\\extensions page to let browser to reload the extension. And then you have to reload the test page to see if the changes to files take effect.

I am newbie to Chrome extension development. And are there any ways to reduce the repeating works? I am also curious that what is the best practice of chrome extension development workflow.

Poor English, feel free to correct.

Answer 1

The extension can reload itself, by calling chrome.runtime.reload(), so it's a matter of triggering the extension to do it.

One method that worked for me, is to watch for tabs' onUpdated event and look for a specific URL (you have come up with), e.g. http://localhost/reloadX?id=....

This is the sample code (to be placed in background.js):

var myReloadURL = 'http://localhost/reloadX?id='
                  + chrome.i18n.getMessage('@@extension_id');

chrome.tabs.onUpdated.addListener(function(tabId, info, tab) {
    if (info.url === myReloadURL) {
        chrome.tabs.remove(tabId);
        chrome.runtime.reload();
    }
});

Additional permissions (to be declared in manifest.json):

...
"permissions": [
    ...
    "tabs",
    "http://localhost/reloadX?id=*"

_{myReloadURL is arbitrary and can be any URL, just doesn't have to be a real URL or the resource will be rendered unreachable.}

Now, in order to reload your extension, you need to open the following address in Chrome:
http://localhost/reloadX?id=<your_extension_id>

It is up to you to choose how to trigger that on save. It could be an on-save hook in your editor, a custom grunt-watch task (since you seem to be familiar with grunt) etc .

---

(BTW, you don't need to reload the chrome://extensions page. It suffices to reload the extension.)