TypeScript / React / Webpack / Chrome Extension Boilerplate

You can use this boilerplate code to start developing a Chrome extension using TypeScript/JS, React for the frontend, and Webpack as the build system.

At Duo Labs, we found ourselves creating Chrome extensions with this stack frequently enough that we thought it would be nice to have a consistent starting point. Getting all the individual pieces configured from scratch can be a pain.

Get started

Clone this repository, and then, in this directory:

1. npm install

2. npx webpack

Your unpacked Chrome extension will be compiled into

dist/

dist/

.crx

Use

npx webpack

Source layout

The default source layout looks like this:

src
├── app
│   ├── background.ts
│   └── content.ts
├── styles
│   └── popup.css
└── ui
    └── popup.tsx

• background.ts

  will get loaded as the extension background script, and will run persistently in the background

• content.ts

  will be injected into the URLs matched by

  dist/manifest.json

  's

  matches

  entry (see Match Patterns documentation)

• popup.tsx

  will become the extension's "browser action" popup
  • NOTE:

    popup.tsx

    compiles into

    dist/js/popup.js

    . It is loaded into

    dist/popup.html

    by an explicit
    tag on that page.

    dist/popup.html

    is static and is not automatically generated by the build process.

• popup.css

  contains styles for the popup. These styles are loaded with

  style-loader

  via the

  import

  line at the top of

  popup.tsx

  (and directly injected into the popup via JavaScript)

Dist layout

dist
├── _locales
│   └── en
│       └── messages.json
├── icons
│   ├── icon128.png
│   ├── icon16.png
│   ├── icon19.png
│   └── icon48.png
├── js
│   ├── background.js
│   ├── content.js
│   └── popup.js
├── manifest.json
└── popup.html

dist

js/*

webpack

dist

Why these choices?

We wanted a boilerplate from which we could be productive immediately, without including components we wouldn't immediately need.

• TypeScript: We chose TypeScript because it grants us the safety of a type system while still being accessible to developers who are only familiar with JavaScript. TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript, so all valid JavaScript is also valid TypeScript. You can use TypeScript's extra functionality only when you want to.
• React: Writing UI state transitions can be buggy and tedious. We like that React allows us to declaratively describe our UI without being overly bulky.
• Webpack: Webpack allows us to define a build pipeline that can be easily extended in the future.

Acknowledgments

This work is inspired by Extensionizr, and the icons in

dist/icons