Id like to be able to generate a crx file with PHP.
A crx file is a zip file with an additional header and Im at a lost on how to create this header. I can create a crx file if I use a pregenerated pem file but this leads to all the crx files having the same extension id and this is not good. Heres a link to what Ive got so far.....
http://valorsolo.com/index.php?page=Viewing%20Message&id=1472&pagenum=2#1500
Incase it helps this has been done in Python and there is an excellent blog post on the finer details here....
http://blog.roomanna.com/12-12-2010/packaging-chrome-extensions
and heres some links to other code on the subject.....
http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/crx.html
http://code.google.com/p/crx-packaging/source/browse/trunk/packer.py
https://github.com/bellbind/crxmake-python/blob/master/crxmake.py
http://www.curetheitch.com/projects/buildcrx/
This ruby code was helpful.
Your public key must be in DER format, and unfortunately PHP's OpenSSL extension can't do that, so far as I can tell. I had to generate it from my private key at the command line:
UPDATE: there is a PHP der2pem() function available here, thanks to tutuDajuju for pointing it out.
Once that's done, building the .crx file is quite easy:
You can use the working PHP solution: https://github.com/andyps/crxbuild There are a PHP class that you can include in your project and command line script.
The CRX format is described in detail on the documentation page: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/crx.html
There are examples on the end of that file for Ruby and Bash. Follow the format in your language (PHP).