How to load external scripts dynamically in Angular?

Question

I have this module which componentize the external library together with additional logic without adding the <script> tag directly into the index.html:

import 'http://external.com/path/file.js'
//import '../js/file.js'

@Component({
    selector: 'my-app',
    template: `
        <script src="http://iknow.com/this/does/not/work/either/file.js"></script>
        <div>Template</div>`
})
export class MyAppComponent {...}

I notice the import by ES6 spec is static and resolved during TypeScript transpiling rather than at runtime.

Anyway to make it configurable so the file.js will be loading either from CDN or local folder? How to tell Angular 2 to load a script dynamically?

Answer 1

You can use following technique to dynamically load JS scripts and libraries on demand in your Angular project.

script.store.ts will contain the path of the script either locally or on a remote server and a name that will be used to load the script dynamically

 interface Scripts {
    name: string;
    src: string;
}  
export const ScriptStore: Scripts[] = [
    {name: 'filepicker', src: 'https://api.filestackapi.com/filestack.js'},
    {name: 'rangeSlider', src: '../../../assets/js/ion.rangeSlider.min.js'}
];

script.service.ts is an injectable service that will handle the loading of script, copy script.service.ts as it is

import {Injectable} from "@angular/core";
import {ScriptStore} from "./script.store";

declare var document: any;

@Injectable()
export class ScriptService {

private scripts: any = {};

constructor() {
    ScriptStore.forEach((script: any) => {
        this.scripts[script.name] = {
            loaded: false,
            src: script.src
        };
    });
}

load(...scripts: string[]) {
    var promises: any[] = [];
    scripts.forEach((script) => promises.push(this.loadScript(script)));
    return Promise.all(promises);
}

loadScript(name: string) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        //resolve if already loaded
        if (this.scripts[name].loaded) {
            resolve({script: name, loaded: true, status: 'Already Loaded'});
        }
        else {
            //load script
            let script = document.createElement('script');
            script.type = 'text/javascript';
            script.src = this.scripts[name].src;
            if (script.readyState) {  //IE
                script.onreadystatechange = () => {
                    if (script.readyState === "loaded" || script.readyState === "complete") {
                        script.onreadystatechange = null;
                        this.scripts[name].loaded = true;
                        resolve({script: name, loaded: true, status: 'Loaded'});
                    }
                };
            } else {  //Others
                script.onload = () => {
                    this.scripts[name].loaded = true;
                    resolve({script: name, loaded: true, status: 'Loaded'});
                };
            }
            script.onerror = (error: any) => resolve({script: name, loaded: false, status: 'Loaded'});
            document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script);
        }
    });
}

}

Inject this ScriptService wherever you need it and load js libs like this

this.script.load('filepicker', 'rangeSlider').then(data => {
    console.log('script loaded ', data);
}).catch(error => console.log(error));