The bundler configuration for a Chrome Extension can be pretty complex. When I started making Chrome Extensions, they were small projects for clients who wanted to automate a task. I was starting a new Chrome Extension almost every week, and it took too much time to configure a new project. Then I thought, "We already have a manifest; why do we need more config files?"
That's the idea behind CRXJS Vite Plugin. My name is Jack Steam, and I've been hard at work over the creating a Vite plugin for Chrome Extensions. So today, I'm excited to invite you to try out CRXJS with Vite.
CRXJS makes it easy to set up a Chrome Extension project with a modern development experience. How easy? Let me show you.
Create your project
Use your favorite package manager to scaffold a new project and follow the prompts to create a React project.
CRXJS doesn't yet work with Vite 3, but support is coming soon!
npm init vite@^2
Install CRXJS Vite Plugin
Now install the latest release of CRXJS using your favorite package manager.
npm i @crxjs/vite-plugin -D
Update the Vite config
Update vite.config.js to match the code below.
// vite.config.js
import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react";
import { crx } from "@crxjs/vite-plugin";
// Node 14 & 16
import manifest from './manifest.json'
// Node >=17
import manifest from './manifest.json' assert { type: 'json' }
export default defineConfig({
plugins: [react(), crx({ manifest })],
});
Create a file named manifest.json next to vite.config.js.
// manifest.json
{
"manifest_version": 3,
"name": "CRXJS React Vite Example",
"version": "1.0.0",
"action": { "default_popup": "index.html" }
}
And run the dev command.
npm run dev
That's it! CRXJS will do the rest. Your project directory should look like this:
Add the extension to Chrome
Let's try it out.
When the build completes, open Chrome or Edge and navigate to chrome://extensions. Make sure to turn on the developer mode switch.
| Chrome | Edge |
|---|---|
| Top right corner | Middle left sidebar |
 |
 |
Drag your dist folder into the Extensions Dashboard to install it. Your extension icon will be in the top bar. The icon will be the first letter of the extension's name.
Profit with Vite HMR
Once you've found the extension icon, right-click it and choose "Inspect popup window". This will open the popup and the popup dev tools window. We need to inspect the popup to keep it open while making changes.
That popup is pretty tiny; let's add some CSS to make it wider.
/* App.css */
.App {
text-align: center;
+ min-width: 350px;
}
And boom! HMR magic at work.
If you enjoyed this how-to guide, check out CRXJS on GitHub and give us a star!
Top comments (5)
After
vite build, popup is invalid.We fixed this regression and added e2e tests to guard against recurrences.
Thanks for the feedback! Care to elaborate?
The image is a screenshot of the after build.
/dist/index.html
Basic Project - github.com/keyding/vite-rpce-test. Thanks