grunt-chromeload

Grunt task for loading or reloading tabs in Chrome.

Tired of having a new tab open every time you use grunt-open after launching a server or something? Me too. grunt-chrome-load scans open tabs across Chrome and reloads the ones you want instead of opening a brand new one every time.

Prerequisites

• Grunt, obviously.
• chrome-cli: https://github.com/prasmussen/chrome-cli

How to use it

grunt.config({
  chromeload: {
      dev: {
          reload_pattern: 'https?:\/\/localhost:8080',
          new_url: 'http://localhost:8080'
        },
      prod: {
          reload_pattern: 'https?:\/\/jayeb.com',
          new_url: 'http://jayeb.com'
        }
    },
});

For each target, you can define an optional reload_pattern. This string will be turned into a regular expression and used to determine which (if any) open Chrome tabs should be reloaded when the task is run.

For each target, you must also define a new_url. If the task is run and no Chrome tabs are found that match the reload_pattern parameter (or no reload_pattern is defined for this task), a new tab will be opened at this URL.

Et cetera

If your server's hostname and port are already defined somewhere in your config, pipe these variables into grunt-chromeload to DRY out your shit:

grunt.config({
  chromeload: {
      dev: {
          reload_pattern: 'https?:\/\/<%= express.dev.options.hostname %>:<%= express.dev.options.port %>',
          new_url: 'http://<%= express.dev.options.hostname %>:<%= express.dev.options.port %>'
        }
    },
});

grunt-chromeload is also great when doing local development on Chrome extensions. where reloading the chrome://extensions page will reload your extension package:

grunt.config({
  chromeload: {
      extensions: {
          reload_pattern: 'chrome:\/\/extensions',
          new_url: 'chrome://extensions'
        }
    },
});