API call for user count in Chrome Web Store?

user_146764 0
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I have an extension in the Chrome Web Store and I like knowing roughly how many people are using it via the "N users" and ratings on its page.

However, I don't really like loading the whole "product" page just to see a couple of numbers and thought I'd try to make a little widget that would display it instead. However, I can't find any API documentation for the Chrome Web Store.

I would a call like /webstore/api/v1/appid.json to exist, but the closest things I've found in searching only concern the Licensing API.

Is there an official Chrome Web Store API for user metrics?

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3 Answers

You can also do this client-side only (at least on your end) by using a cross-domain tool. This snippet will grab the number of users displayed on the Chrome webstore page for an extension (up-to-date as of April 28, 2018):

var chromeExtensionWebstoreURL = 'https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/background-image-for-goog/ehohalpjnnlcmckljdflafjjahdgjpmh';

$.getJSON('http://www.whateverorigin.org/get?url=' + encodeURIComponent(chromeExtensionWebstoreURL) + '&callback=?', function(response){
    var numUsers = ((""+response.contents.match(/<span class="e-f-ih" title="([\d]*?) users">([\d]*?) users<\/span>/)).split(",")[2]);
    console.log(numUsers);
});

In the future, Google may change the class name of the user count span, in which case you just need to update the regex appropriately.

user_52126390
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