Web Extension Background Logger

What

Log centralization for you Web/Chrome Extension. Compatible with every browser extension : Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge.

Why

When you develop your Web Extension, you have to keep an eye on multiple consoles and logs from :

• Background script.
• Content script.
• Popup page (either page action or browser action).
• Option page.

This webpack plugin allows you to centralize all logs in the background page console.

Get Started

First, install Web Extension Background Logger :

# npm
npm i -D webpack-webextension-background-logger

# yarn
yarn add -D webpack-webextension-background-logger

Add to your Webpack config :

const BackgroundLogger = require('webpack-webextension-background-logger')

module.exports = {
  // your webpack config
  // ...

  plugins: [new BackgroundLogger()],
}

Web Extension Background Logger will look for an entry named background by default, but you can customize this :

new BackgroundLogger({ backgroundEntry: 'main' })

Usage

Now, instead of using good old console.log, simply use console.bg :

console.bg('loggy-log-log', foo)

This will print your log in the background page console.

Types for console.bg

If you use TypeScript, or type check your JavaScript (like this project does), you might want to tell the compiler that console.bg exists.

To do this, include in a declaration file (typings.d.ts for example) at the root of your project :

/// <reference types="webpack-webextension-background-logger/console" />

Or you can add to your tsonfig.json :

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "typeRoots": ["node_modules/@types", "node_modules/webpack-webextension-background-logger"]
  }
}

Production build

For production builds, you can opt out of background logger and revert to plain console.log statements :

new BackgroundLogger({ revertToLog: true })

This will simply remove Background Logger from your build and rewrite every console.bg statement into console.log statement.