Get Started with React

This quick guide will get you up and running with a Chrome Extension popup page. You'll see how to integrate CRXJS with Vite, then explore Vite HMR in an extension React HTML page. The first two sections take about 90 seconds!

Create a project

Use your favorite package manager to scaffold a new project and follow the prompts to create a vanilla JS project.

Vite 2

npm init vite@^2.9.4

Vite 3 (beta)

npm init vite@latest

beta

CRXJS support for Vite 3 is in beta.

react users

HMR in CRXJS is incompatible with @vite/plugin-react-swc. We recommend using @vitejs/plugin-react instead.

Install CRXJS Vite plugin

Now install the CRXJS Vite plugin using your favorite package manager.

Vite 2

npm i @crxjs/vite-plugin@latest -D

Vite 3 (beta)

npm i @crxjs/vite-plugin@beta -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'
import manifest from './manifest.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" }
}

First development build

Time to run the dev command. 🤞

npm run dev

That's it! CRXJS will do the rest.

Your project directory should look like this:

Next, we'll load the extension in the browser and give the development build a test run.