Match patterns
Host permissions and content script matching are based on a set of URLs defined by match patterns. A match pattern is essentially a URL that begins with a permitted scheme (http
, https
, file
, or ftp
, and that can contain '*
' characters. The special pattern <all_urls>
matches any URL that starts with a permitted scheme. Each match pattern has 3 parts:
scheme—for example,
http
orfile
or*
Access tofile
URLs isn't automatic. The user must visit the extensions management page and opt in tofile
access for each extension that requests it.host—for example,
www.google.com
or*.google.com
or*
; if the scheme isfile
, there is no host partpath—for example,
/*
,/foo*
, or/foo/bar
. The path must be present in a host permission, but is always treated as/*
.
Here's the basic syntax:
<url-pattern> := <scheme>://<host><path>
<scheme> := '*' | 'http' | 'https' | 'file' | 'ftp' | 'urn'
<host> := '*' | '*.' <any char except '/' and '*'>+
<path> := '/' <any chars>
The meaning of '*
' depends on whether it's in the scheme, host, or path part. If the scheme is *
, then it matches either http
or https
, and not file
, ftp
, or urn
. If the host is just *
, then it matches any host. If the host is *._hostname_
, then it matches the specified host or any of its subdomains. In the path section, each '*
' matches 0 or more characters. The following table shows some valid patterns.
Note: urn
scheme is available since Chrome 91.
Pattern | What it does | Examples of matching URLs |
---|---|---|
https://*/* | Matches any URL that uses the https scheme | https://www.google.com/ https://example.org/foo/bar.html |
https://*/foo* | Matches any URL that uses the https scheme, on any host, as long as the path starts with /foo | https://example.com/foo/bar.html https://www.google.com/foo |
https://*.google.com/foo*bar | Matches any URL that uses the https scheme, is on a google.com host (such as www.google.com, docs.google.com, or google.com), as long as the path starts with /foo and ends with bar | https://www.google.com/foo/baz/bar https://docs.google.com/foobar |
https://example.org/foo/bar.html | Matches the specified URL | https://example.org/foo/bar.html |
file:///foo* | Matches any local file whose path starts with /foo | file:///foo/bar.html file:///foo |
http://127.0.0.1/* | Matches any URL that uses the http scheme and is on the host 127.0.0.1 | http://127.0.0.1/ http://127.0.0.1/foo/bar.html |
*://mail.google.com/* | Matches any URL that starts with http://mail.google.com or https://mail.google.com . | http://mail.google.com/foo/baz/bar https://mail.google.com/foobar |
urn:* | Matches any URL that starts with urn: . | urn:uuid:54723bea-c94e-480e-80c8-a69846c3f582 urn:uuid:cfa40aff-07df-45b2-9f95-e023bcf4a6da |
<all_urls> | Matches any URL that uses a permitted scheme. (See the beginning of this section for the list of permitted schemes.) | http://example.org/foo/bar.html file:///bar/baz.html |
Here are some examples of invalid pattern matches:
Bad pattern | Why it's bad |
---|---|
https://www.google.com | No path |
https://*foo/bar | '*' in the host can be followed only by a '.' or '/' |
https://foo.*.bar/baz | If '*' is in the host, it must be the first character |
http:/bar | Missing scheme separator ("/" should be "//") |
foo://* | Invalid scheme |
Some schemes are not supported in all contexts.