What is the best way to retrieve a Google Chrome Extension ID?

Question

I know two ways of getting Google Chrome Extension ID:

chrome.app.getDetails().id;

chrome.i18n.getMessage('@@extension_id');

Are there any drawbacks regarding one of those?

I tend to use the first one since it's shorter but who knows. I may be wrong.

---- EDIT ----

Since I'm the only who cares, here's what I did to benchmark those:

console.time('t1');
for (var i=0; i < 10000; i++) { chrome.app.getDetails().id; }; 
console.timeEnd('t1');

console.time('t2');
for (var i=0; i < 10000; i++) { chrome.i18n.getMessage('@@extension_id'); }; 
console.timeEnd('t2');

Here are the results:

t1: 5190.766ms

t2: 860.697ms

It looks like using i18n is so much faster overall but the first one is faster at the beginning and after 3 or 4 executions, i18n is better.

Answer 1

Try to go through the similar query: How to reference the version information in a Google Chrome extension?

There you can get a broader idea of the first call, you are using.

    chrome.app.getDetails().id;

Answer 2

In the end, I created a small Chrome Extension to benchmark three known ways to retrieve Chrome Extension ID:

• chrome.app.getDetails().id;
• chrome.i18n.getMessage('@@extension_id');
• chrome.extension.getURL('/').slice(19, -1);
• chrome.runtime.id;

As you can see in the result below, chrome.extension.getURL('/').slice(19, -1); seems to spend less time overall but the first calls are equivalent to the other ones.

As we can see, chrome.runtime.id wins.

Note #1: You can download the zip archive of the extension here

Note #2: I used performance.now() to get an accurate timing.

Note #3: I added chrome.runtime.id to the benchmark tool. Thanks Konstantin Smolyanin!

Answer 3

It seems that since chrome 22 the best way to get the extension ID is built-in property chrome.runtime.id. See documentation.

console.log(chrome.runtime.id);