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Extension Update Notification
What is the plan/behavior supposed to be for updating extensions? If you publish an updated version of your extension through CrossRider will that set the flags necessary to indicate to the browsers that a new update is available?
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EMPLOYEE
I’m
proud
Yes!
When you update your code we take care of all the necessarily automatic updates.
There are two types of updates:
- Code updates:
This is the most common update where you update your extension code.
Your extension is checking every several hours if there are new updates and if there are, they will be installed automatically without the need of browser restart. - Resources updates:
Sometime you wants to update your resources (your extension name, browser icons, icon of your app, etc.) which requires to repack your extension core files. In that case, we will re-build your extensions files (xpi, crx) and flag the browsers that your extensions needs to be updated.
You should note the different behavior of each browser (it's relevant only for the resources update):- Chrome will check for updates every several hours and will automatically update the extension without prompting the user and without the need for restart.
- Firefox will check for updates (daily if I remember correctly) and will prompt the user for new version update which requires restart of FF.
- In IE we still don't support the browser button yet but once implemented it will not require restart.
I hope you like this solution. It really should make your life much easier and take care of updates for you.
Comment - Code updates:
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I’m
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Koby, thanks for the quick reply. That sounds good, but I'm not sure that is happening. I updated the code in our extension (216) and from within Chrome forced an update check and got nothing.
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When it's just code update we don't create new crx so for Chrome it's the same extension.
Here are two tricks (Chrome only) to check the updates:
- if you want to update only your code, go to your extensions manager, verify you are at 'developer mode' and click at the background.html of your extension. When the popup is opened, go to the console tab and type:
Crossrider._updateAppAndManifest()
This is actually what happen every several hours (check and get the new version if exists). Please note that we use some caching (1hr) on these requests so you might need to clear your cache if you use it very often. - If you want to check the extension update mechanism (i.e., when we repack your extension and tell Chrome to pick the new updates), you should change your app's description. Once you hit 'save and publish' we will create new crx for your use. Now you can go to the Chrome extension manager and ask/force for updates. You will see your extension version is changing now.
Looking forward to know it's working well for you :)
- if you want to update only your code, go to your extensions manager, verify you are at 'developer mode' and click at the background.html of your extension. When the popup is opened, go to the console tab and type:
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so does IE update in different intervals or not at all? -
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Tobias,
Code updates happens on the same interval cross-browser, so yes this means that your app code will get updated on Internet Explorer with the same interval as Firefox and Chrome. -
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Isn't there any fix time after which browsers update/prompt for update? -
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It's a matter of a couple of hours for users to get the code updates (up to six hours)
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Safari auto update mechanisms works exactly the same.
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So whats a good methodology for determining if its upgrade vs an install?
So we have some built in tracking on our own side, and
I'm wondering if what i should be doing is storing in the DB, something like,
APP.install_date
Then essentially i could have my code check to see if that data is set, if not set it and assume its an install, else assume its an update.
Does that sound good? -
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Mark,
You save the installation time in a DB key that never expires using appAPI.db.set:
http://docs.crossrider.com/#!/api/app...
You can add checks to your code to create this installation time key only if not already exists so it will allow you to know the first time of installation (i.e the first time of the execution of the code).
However, I am not sure exactly what is your use case here and what you are trying to achieve.
If you could please explain us the need for such checks we might be able to help you in more details.
Please email us to support@crossrider.com with more information, or open a new GetSatisfaction question. -
EMPLOYEE
