Question

I am trying to write a simple chrome extension using html5 local storage.
I am using one index variable which auto-increments everytime a new value is added to local storage.

But when i load chrome browser action, it initializes that variable to 0.

Can we declare any variable just once in browser action.

P.S. I am new to chrome development

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

A browser action page, like popup.html loads every time you click the extensions icon. Use background page instead, what lives on the background, and is initializing just once, when you load the app.

Backgorund pages needs to be registered in manifest -> Background Pages

Background page is allowed to handle localStorage.

For example:
initialize a variable counter in the background page, and make a function to increase it, like

var counter = 0;
function incCounter(){
    window.counter++;
}

Then, you can call this function from popup.html like this:

var bgp = chrome.extension.getBackgroundPage();
bgp.incCounter();

Regards