Ways to add javascript files dynamically in a page

Nazmul picture Nazmul · Apr 22, 2011 · Viewed 50.7k times · Source

I have seen Scriptaculous.js file to include its required javascript files dynamically. Is there any better approach to include javascript dynamically.

For example, I would like to include my js files like,

<script src="single.js?files=first.js,second.js,third.js..."></script>

How can I do that in an efficient manner?

Answer

Anand Thangappan picture Anand Thangappan · Apr 23, 2011

To load a .js or .css file dynamically, in a nutshell, it means using DOM methods to first create a swanky new "SCRIPT" or "LINK" element, assign it the appropriate attributes, and finally, use element.appendChild() to add the element to the desired location within the document tree. It sounds a lot more fancy than it really is. Lets see how it all comes together:

function loadjscssfile(filename, filetype){
 if (filetype=="js"){ //if filename is a external JavaScript file
  var fileref=document.createElement('script')
  fileref.setAttribute("type","text/javascript")
  fileref.setAttribute("src", filename)
 }
 else if (filetype=="css"){ //if filename is an external CSS file
  var fileref=document.createElement("link")
  fileref.setAttribute("rel", "stylesheet")
  fileref.setAttribute("type", "text/css")
  fileref.setAttribute("href", filename)
 }
 if (typeof fileref!="undefined")
  document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(fileref)
}

loadjscssfile("myscript.js", "js") //dynamically load and add this .js file
loadjscssfile("javascript.php", "js") //dynamically load "javascript.php" as a JavaScript file
loadjscssfile("mystyle.css", "css") ////dynamically load and add this .css file

i hope its use full