Vim: Make chrome refresh anytime I :write - google-chrome

Question

I want a solution that does what's described in the vim wiki here, but that works on Chrome.
That is, I'm trying to avoid this:
Edit your HTML/CSS file.
Hit save in Vim.
CMD/CNTRL/ALT + TAB over to Firefox.
Press Ctrl-R in Firefox to refresh.
CMD/CNTRL/ALT + TAB back to Vim.
Do it again and again, wincing a little bit each time.
The vim wiki solution is for firefox, and other scripts and solutions I've found on the web are Mac only. But I'm on windows, and will often have vim open on the left half of the screen (editing html) and chrome open on the right half of the screen (displaying the file I'm editing).
A really "dumb" solution would work fine for me. That is, there wouldn't even need to be communication of the filename between vim and the browser. If I could just turn on a mode in vim, call it "auto-refresh", and now anytime I do a :w the currently active tab in chrome refreshes itself, without taking focus off the vim window. That would be perfect. Is it possible?

Answer 1

I don't know how to reload a give chrome page from shell, however, I agree with Chiel92 that if you need to see your changes when file changes, you can do that from browser.
See LiveReload, works with Windows & Mac (not for me then) and supports Safari & Chrome.
LiveReload will check your main page as well all css and javscript that it depends from, if any of those changes, it will reload it.
They seems to have launched a second version, however official site of version 2 it's offline and doesn't seem version 2 it's on github either. (Version 1 it's it's on github)

Answer 2

a solution that might work for you is in your html coding include the line in the head tag
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30" />
this will reload the page every 30 seconds directly taking from
w3schools.com
now when you want to deploy it just remove that line

Answer 3

If you are working on mac, then a bit of apple script does the job.
putting this function in your vim configuration will let you automate the process of switching between windows and refreshing you described.
function! ReloadBrowser()
silent exe "!osascript -e 'tell app \"Firefox\" to activate\<cr>
\tell app \"System events\"\<cr> keystroke \"r\" using command down\<cr>
\end tell'"
silent exe "!osascript -e 'tell app \"Iterm2\" to activate'"
endfunction
Calling that function will change system focus to Firefox, hit CMD-R to refresh the page, then change focus back to Iterm2.
Change 'Firefox' and 'Iterm2' to fit your workflow.
You can type the function into the vim command prompt like :call ReloadBrowser() or trigger the call with a mapping like this:
nnoremap <leader>rl call ReloadBrowser()<cr>
To trigger the call any time you write the file you could use an autocommand.
augroup AutoReload
au!
autocmd BufWritePost *.filetype call ReloadBrowser()
augroup END
That could get a bit annoying though so if you really want that behavior I think it would be best to make it toggle-able like this:
let s:auto_reload = v:false
function! ToggleAutoReload()
if s:auto_reload
augroup AutoReload
au!
autocmd BufWritePost *.filetype call ReloadBrowser()
augroup END
else
augroup AutoReload
au!
augroup END
endif
let s:auto_reload = !s:auto_reload
endfunction
with that in place you can either manually trigger the reload with <leader>rl or use :call ToggleAutoReload() to enable automatic reloading when you save the file, and a second :call ToggleAutoReload() will disable it when you're done.

Answer 4

I've tried LiveReload in the past but it wasn't a very dependable solution: it was very buggy and unstable and the installation process was too involved for too little effect.
Since then, (more than a year) I've been using a small Chrome extension that automatically reloads the webpage every x seconds. It's not "smart" at all but it works well both for local files and hosted files. I've used it countless times without any side effects whatsoever.
That Solution on the Vim Wiki is possible because of MozREPL which allows an external process to interact with Firefox. From there it's quite trivial to write an autocmd that triggers a refresh on :w or on CursorHold. But AFAIK there's no such tool for Chrome/Chromium and they don't offer an external API. LiveReload is a brilliant but failed hack and I believe that you'll have to settle with the dumb solution if you must work with Chrome.
edit
I just remembered a script that works very well on this Linux box but is a little bit limited on Mac OS X and doesn't seem to work on Windows. Essentially you register a window/tab with a part of it's name:
$ webrf setup-by-search test.html
then you simply do:
$ webrf refresh
to refresh the page.

Answer 5

I use WSL and two screens so for me this works. (as with every :write is a bit too much)
nmap <leader>t :silent !powershell.exe -command "Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms; [Windows.Forms.Cursor]::Position = \"-1290,50\"; Add-Type -MemberDefinition '[DllImport(\"user32.dll\")] public static extern void mouse_event(int flags, int dx, int dy, int cButtons, int info);' -Name U32 -Namespace W; [W.U32]::mouse_event(6,0,0,0,0); [Windows.Forms.Cursor]::Position = \"40,40\"; [W.U32]::mouse_event(6,0,0,0,0);"<CR><CR>
It basicly tells vim through a powershell command to have the mouse cursor go to:
position -1290, 50 ( which is where the refresh button of chrome is)
left mouse click
position 40,40 (which is where my vim is in full screen)
left mouse click
Step 3 and 4 is needed to refocus vim I tried to sent ALT-TAB but my vimrc disliked the % symbol.

Answer 6

On Windows OS you can utilize an AutoHotKey script that will automate that for a key press.
For example, the following script will bind Left Alt + r to switch to the browser window, send a Control + r(Refresh) and then get back to your previous window.
Replace Title_of_your_webpage with your browser's window title string after your page has loaded in it.
!r::
WinGet, winid, , Title_of_your_webpage
WinActivate, ahk_id %winid%
Send ^r
Send !{Tab}
Return