Web Extensions

JavaScript in-memory replacement for Web Extensions API. This is in very early stages and I'm updating it as I need to test an extension I'm developing.

Background

Have you ever needed to create a testable browser extension but couldn't find an easy way to mock the browser API? This extension creates a fake browser instance that you can easily pass around in your tests.

Installation

$ yarn add web-extensions --dev

Usage

Require the Web Extensions implementation for the browser you're developing and pass it around. For example, if you're developing an extension for Google Chrome:

// Import the mock Chrome class
import { Chrome } from 'web-extensions'
 
// Create an instance of the mock
const chrome = new Chrome()
 
// Use it like you were using the real API
chrome.browserAction.setTitle({ text: 'Hello!' })

You can do the same if you're developing an extension for Edge, Firefox, Firefox for Android and Opera. Here is an example for Firefox:

// Import the mock browser class
import {
  Chrome,
  Edge,
  Firefox,
  FirefoxAndroid,
  Opera
} from 'web-extensions'
 
// Create an instance of the mock
const browser = new Firefox()
 
// Use it like you were using the real API
browser.browserAction.setTitle({ text: 'Hello!' })

Testing

Inside your extension, the global variable chrome/browser is available globally. In tests, however, it is undefined. There are two ways to overcome this. You can architecture your extension to use dependency injection, or you can mock the global variable if your testing framework has those capabilities.

Dependency Injection

Suppose that you have a class responsible for managing the extension's UI:

class ExtensionUI {
  constructor(chrome) {
    this.browserAction = chrome.browserAction
  }
  
  setBrowserActionTitle(text) {
    this.browserAction.setTitle({ text })
  }
}

In your code, you could easily instantiate that class with the global variable chrome, because it is natively available:

const ui = new ExtensionUI(chrome) // chrome is a global variable provided by Google Chrome
ui.setBrowserActionTitle('hello')

To test that class, you would need to inject an instance of the mock to its constructor:

import { Chrome } from 'web-extensions'
 
const mockChrome = new Chrome()
const ui = new ExtensionUI(mockChrome)
 
ui.setBrowserActionTitle('hello')

Globals

Jest provides an API to resolve global variables. You can declare chrome as a mock:

// inside your test file
import { Chrome } from 'web-extensions'
 
const mockChrome = new Chrome()
 
global.chrome = mockChrome

Assertions

Every API stores the internal data in a variable called mockData. It can be used to perform assertions. For example, suppose you're testing a function that sets the browser action's title.

import { Chrome } from 'web-extensions'
 
const mockChrome = new Chrome()
const ui = new ExtensionUI(mockChrome)
 
describe('#setBrowserActionTitle', () => {
  it('sets the browser action title', () => {
    ui.setBrowserActionTitle('Hello')
    expect(mockChrome.browserAction.mockData.tooltip.title).toEqual('Hello')
  })
})

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome. I have implemented the mocks for what I needed, but feel free to look at the CHANGELOG and implement the remaining APIs.

1. Fork it!
2. Create your feature branch: git checkout -b my-new-feature
3. Commit your changes: git commit -am 'Add some feature'
4. Push to the branch: git push origin my-new-feature
5. Submit a pull request

Versioning

The project uses SemVer for versioning. For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.