Chrome apps command line arguments

[Ramsundar Kandasamy]

Hi,

Does a chrome app allow to read command line arguments?

e.g. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --profile-directory=Default --app-id=llllllllllllll "MyName" "Address"

Is it possible to get the "MyName" and "Address" in the app's javascript layer?

Thanks!

Ram

[Antony Sargent]

In general, no. Also, note that chrome packaged apps on platforms other than ChromeOS (eg windows, osx, linux) are being slowly phased out:

https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html

If the thing you're building makes sense as an extension, you can probably take advantage of native messaging to get integration with whatever overall system you're building:

https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging

[Kyle Graehl]

chrome.runtime.sendMessage can be called from a website (or another
app) if you setup the manifest to accept the message from the website
and/or other app/extension. If the app is not launched, it will get an
onMessageExternal event which you can use to "launch" your app (e.g.
do the thing your onLaunched event would do)

So you could launch the app by opening a webpage which then messages
the app. Not sure if this fits into your workflow, but just an idea.

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[Antony Sargent]

That's a good idea - note that it would require an appropriate "externally_connectable" entry in your manifest: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/manifest/externally_connectable

Another simple option that would work for an extension, but not a packaged app, is to provide a url on the command line to a page within your extension and provide arguments via url parameters. For example:

<path to chrome.exe> chrome-extension://EXTENSION_ID_HERE/launch.html?somearg=foo&anotherarg=bar

Then in the launch.html page you'd have some javascript that uses something like:

let args = {};

window.location.search.slice(1).split('&').forEach(pair => {

  let keyval = pair.split('=');

  args[unescape(keyval[0])] = unescape(keyval[1]);

});

to extract the key/value pairs. 

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[Ramsundar Kandasamy]

thanks for your inputs...

This should be ok - "So you could launch the app by opening a webpage which then messages the app. Not sure if this fits into your workflow, but just an idea."

will first have to search/read whether it is possible to launch a chrome extension when chrome is not running?

and then have to check whether the (WebRTC) functionalities that I have in my chrome app would run as an extension as well.

Thanks guys!

Ram

> email to apps-dev+u...@chromium.org.