runtime.connectNative()
Connects the extension to a native application on the user's computer.
This takes the name of a native application as a parameter. It starts the native application and returns a
runtime.Port
object to the caller.The caller can then use the
Port
to exchange messages with the native application using Port.postMessage()
and port.onMessage
.The native application will run until it exits itself, or the caller calls
Port.disconnect()
, or the page that created the Port
is destroyed. Once the Port
is disconnected the browser will give the process a few seconds to exit gracefully, and then kill it if it has not exited.For more information, see Native messaging.
Syntax
var port = browser.runtime.connectNative(
application // string
)
Parameters
application
string
. The name of the native application to connect to. This must match the "name" property in the native application's manifest file.
Return value
A runtime.Port
object. The port which the caller can use to exchange messages with the native application.
Browser compatibility
Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHubwebextensions-desktop | webextensions-mobile | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
connectNative | ChromeFull support29 | EdgeFull support15 | FirefoxFull support50 | OperaFull support16 | SafariFull support14
| Firefox for AndroidNo supportNo |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- No support
- No support
- See implementation notes.
The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
Examples
This example connects to the native application "ping_pong" and starts listening for messages from it. It also sends the native application a message when the user clicks a browser action icon:
/*
On startup, connect to the "ping_pong" app.
*/
var port = browser.runtime.connectNative("ping_pong");
/*
Listen for messages from the app.
*/
port.onMessage.addListener((response) => {
console.log("Received: " + response);
});
/*
On a click on the browser action, send the app a message.
*/
browser.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(() => {
console.log("Sending: ping");
port.postMessage("ping");
});
Example extensions
Acknowledgements
This API is based on Chromium's chrome.runtime
API. This documentation is derived from runtime.json
in the Chromium code.
Microsoft Edge compatibility data is supplied by Microsoft Corporation and is included here under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.