Chromium Blog
News and developments from the open source browser project
Connecting Chrome apps and extensions with native applications
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
We
recently announced
the deprecation of
NPAPI
plug-in support in Chrome. One of the main use cases for NPAPI plugins in Chrome apps and extensions was to connect with native applications installed on the same computer. For example, a native password management application that a user has already installed on the system may want to connect with a Chrome extension to synchronize passwords. To support such use cases without the need for NPAPI, we’ve recently added the
Native Messaging API
.
To use this API, native applications must register a native messaging host that Chrome apps and extensions can connect to. This is done by installing a
special manifest file
that defines a name and path to the native messaging host binary, as well as set of app and extension IDs that can connect to it. Once a native messaging host manifest is installed, Chrome apps and extensions can connect to it using simple API:
var port = chrome.extension.connectNative( "org.chromium.native_messaging_example");
The parameter passed to
chrome.extension.connectNative()
is the name used to identify the native messaging host. When a native messaging port is created Chrome starts the host in a separate process and communicates with it over the standard input and output streams. The app or extension can send and receive messages from the native application using this simple API:
// Register handler for incoming messages.
port.onMessage.addListener(function(msg) {
console.log("Received " + msg);
});
// Send a message.
port.postMessage({text: "Hello!"})
It's also possible to send one-off messages without creating a port:
chrome.extension.sendNativeMessage(
"org.chromium.native_messaging_example",
{messageField: "field value"},
function(response) {
console.log("Received response" + response);
});
For details on how to create and register a native messaging host please refer to the
API documentation
and check out our
sample application
, which also includes a simple native messaging host.
The Native Messaging API is available on Windows, OS X and Linux starting from Chrome 29. To learn about other NPAPI alternatives, check out the
NPAPI deprecation Chromium wiki page
.
Posted by Sergey Ulanov, Software Engineer and Message Dispatcher
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