axios-chrome-messaging-adapter

Axios adapter to pass the requests to a Chrome Extension background script. Useful to avoid CORB in content scripts.

More informations about CORB here and here.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

This axios adapter is only intended to be used in Chrome extensions, it simply forwards axios requests to the background script, using the chrome.runtime.sendMessage(...) API.

Installation

With npm (or yarn)

$ npm install --save axios-chrome-messaging-adapter
$ # Or
$ yarn add axios-chrome-messaging-adapter

With a CDN

Axios must be available as a global object so you'll need to import it from a CDN too, we use unpkg here as an example.

<script src="https://unpkg.com/axios@0.18.0/dist/axios.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/axios-chrome-messaging-adapter@0.3.1/dist/axios-chrome-messaging-adapter.min.js"></script>

Quick start

If you are using a bundler, like webpack or rollup:, you'll just need to require the lib. If you are using a CDN, the lib will be available under window.axiosChromeMessagingAdapter.

In your background script:

import axios from 'axios';
import { registerMessageHandler } from 'axios-chrome-messaging-adapter';

// register the adapter message hanlder
registerMessageHandler();

In your content script:

import axios from 'axios'
import { adapter } from 'axios-chrome-messaging-adapter'

// tell axios to use the adapter for this request
const axiosInstance = axios.create({
  adapter,
  ... // the rest of your configuration :)
})

Known limitations

The adapter is currently incompatible with the following axios parameters:

• paramsSerializer
• onUploadProgress
• onDownloadProgress
• cancelToken
• transformRequest (axios 0.19+)
• transformResponse (axios 0.19+)

This limitation is due to the fact that only scalar values can pass through the chrome messaging API, making these callbacks functions unavailable for the moment.

If one of these options is used, it will be ignored and the content script will emit a warning.

Usage with Chrome Manifest V3

When using this adapter with a chrome extension using Manifest V3, XMLHttpRequest isn't available in the service worker (former background script) so the default axios adapter won't work…

To solve this issue, you have to specify a custom adapter that works in this context. I recommend using @vespaiach/axios-fetch-adapter.

import axios from 'axios';
import { registerMessageHandler } from 'axios-chrome-messaging-adapter';
import fetchAdapter from '@vespaiach/axios-fetch-adapter';

// register the adapter message hanlder and use the custom adapter
registerMessageHandler({ adapter: fetchAdapter });

Development

Clone the project to the directory and install dependencies

$ git clone https://github.com/dzetah/axios-chrome-messaging-adapter
$ cd axios-chrome-messaging-adapter
$ yarn # or npm install
$ npm i --no-save axios # install axios peer dependency

Start typescript compilation in watch mode

$ npm run watch