Check whether user has a Chrome extension installed

Question

I am in the process of building a Chrome extension, and for the whole thing to work the way I would like it to, I need an external JavaScript script to be able to detect if a user has my extension installed.

For example: A user installs my plugin, then goes to a website with my script on it. The website detects that my extension is installed and updates the page accordingly.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Chrome now has the ability to send messages from the website to the extension.

So in the extension background.js (content.js will not work) add something like:

chrome.runtime.onMessageExternal.addListener(
    function(request, sender, sendResponse) {
        if (request) {
            if (request.message) {
                if (request.message == "version") {
                    sendResponse({version: 1.0});
                }
            }
        }
        return true;
    });

This will then let you make a call from the website:

var hasExtension = false;

chrome.runtime.sendMessage(extensionId, { message: "version" },
    function (reply) {
        if (reply) {
            if (reply.version) {
                if (reply.version >= requiredVersion) {
                    hasExtension = true;
                }
            }
        }
        else {
          hasExtension = false;
        }
    });

You can then check the hasExtension variable. The only drawback is the call is asynchronous, so you have to work around that somehow.

Edit: As mentioned below, you'll need to add an entry to the manifest.json listing the domains that can message your addon. Eg:

"externally_connectable": {
    "matches": ["*://localhost/*", "*://your.domain.com/*"]
},