Using Firebase databases inside a Chrome Extension

How to go about using Firebase as a database for your Extensions on Chrome

Hello!

Firstly thanks for checking out my newsletter, this is the first one and I’m aiming to publish a new post every 1-2 weeks.

Each post will have a main topic along with perhaps some useful links to articles / videos I have found interesting during the week.

This week’s topic is Chrome Extensions and more specifically how to use Firebase as a database for your extension.

It turns out you do have to jump through a few hoops to connect Firebase to your Chrome Extension as simply pasting your API details and adding the SDK to your main JavaScript file won’t work.

Instead, you need to use a background page and the Chrome Runtime functions to send messages with requests to your background page whilst also adding special security attributes to your manifest JSON file.

I have made a couple of videos on how to do this for both the Firebase real-time database and for Firestore linked below.

Realtime Database

Firestore

Next week on the channel we will have videos on the Google Maps & Chromecast APIs.

Thanks for reading!

Best,

Rusty