How can I include all JavaScript files in a directory via JavaScript file?

Question

I have a bunch of JavaScript files that I would like to include in the page, but I don\'t want to have to keep writing

Answer 1

I was looking for an answer to this question and had my own problems. I found a couple solutions in various places and put them together into my own preferred answer.

function exploreFolder(folderURL,options){
/* options:                 type            explaination

    **REQUIRED** callback:  FUNCTION        function to be called on each file. passed the complete filepath
    then:                   FUNCTION        function to be called after loading all files in folder. passed the number of files loaded
    recursive:              BOOLEAN         specifies wether or not to travel deep into folders
    ignore:                 REGEX           file names matching this regular expression will not be operated on
    accept:                 REGEX           if this is present it overrides the `ignore` and only accepts files matching the regex
*/
$.ajax({
    url: folderURL,
    success: function(data){
        var filesLoaded = 0,
        fileName = '';

        $(data).find("td > a").each(function(){
            fileName = $(this).attr("href");

            if(fileName === '/')
                return;  //to account for the (go up a level) link

            if(/\/\//.test(folderURL + fileName))
                return; //if the url has two consecutive slashes '//'

            if(options.accept){
                if(!options.accept.test(fileName))
                    //if accept is present and the href fails, dont callback
                    return;
            }else if(options.ignore)
                if(options.ignore.test(fileName))
                    //if ignore is present and the href passes, dont callback
                    return;

            if(fileName.length > 1 && fileName.substr(fileName.length-1) === "/")
                if(options.recursive)
                    //only recurse if we are told to
                    exploreFolder(folderURL + fileName, options);
                else
                    return;

            filesLoaded++;
            options.callback(folderURL + fileName);
            //pass the full URL into the callback function
        });
        if(options.then && filesLoaded > 0) options.then(filesLoaded);
    }
});
}

Then you can call it like this:

var loadingConfig = {
    callback: function(file) { console.log("Loaded file: " + file); },
    then: function(numFiles) { console.log("Finished loading " + numFiles + " files"); },
    recursive: true,
    ignore: /^NOLOAD/,
};
exploreFolder('/someFolderURL/', loadingConfig);

This example will call that callback on every file/folder in the specified folder except for ones that start with NOLOAD. If you want to actually load the file into the page then you can use this other helper function that I developed.

function getFileExtension(fname){
    if(fname)
        return fname.substr((~-fname.lastIndexOf(".") >>> 0) + 2);
    console.warn("No file name provided");
}
var loadFile = (function(filename){
    var img = new Image();

    return function(){
        var fileref,
            filename = arguments[0],
            filetype = getFileExtension(filename).toLowerCase();

        switch (filetype) {
            case '':
                return;
            case 'js':
                fileref=document.createElement('script');
                fileref.setAttribute("type","text/javascript");
                fileref.setAttribute("src", filename);
                break;
            case "css":
                fileref=document.createElement("link");
                fileref.setAttribute("rel", "stylesheet");
                fileref.setAttribute("type", "text/css");
                fileref.setAttribute("href", filename);
                break;
            case "jpg":
            case "jpeg":
            case 'png':
            case 'gif':
                img.src = filename;
                break;
            default:
                console.warn("This file type is not supported: "+filetype);
                return;
        }
        if (typeof fileref !== undefined){
            $("head").append(fileref);
            console.log('Loaded file: ' + filename);
        }
    }
})();

This function accepts a JS | CSS | (common image) file and loads it. It will also execute the JS files. The complete call that needs to be run in your script to load all images and* stylesheets and other scripts could look like this:

loadingConfig = {
    callback: loadfile,
    then: function(numFiles) { console.log("Finished loading " + numFiles + " files"); },
    recursive: true,
    ignore: /^NOLOAD/,
};
exploreFolder('/someFolderURL/', loadingConfig);

It works amazingly!

Answer 2

Given that you want a 100% client side solution, in theory you could probably do this:

Via XmlHttpRequest, get the directory listing page for that directory (most web servers return a listing of files if there is no index.html file in the directory).

Parse that file with javascript, pulling out all the .js files. This will of course be sensitive to the format of the directory listing on your web server / web host.

Add the script tags dynamically, with something like this:

function loadScript (dir, file) {
 var scr = document.createElement("script");
 scr.src = dir + file;
 document.body.appendChild(scr);
 }

Answer 3

In general, this is probably not a great idea, since your html file should only be loading JS files that they actually make use of. Regardless, this would be trivial to do with any server-side scripting language. Just insert the script tags before serving the pages to the client.

If you want to do it without using server-side scripting, you could drop your JS files into a directory that allows listing the directory contents, and then use XMLHttpRequest to read the contents of the directory, and parse out the file names and load them.

Option #3 is to have a "loader" JS file that uses getScript() to load all of the other files. Put that in a script tag in all of your html files, and then you just need to update the loader file whenever you upload a new script.

Answer 4

It can be done fully client side, but all javascript file names must be specified. For example, as array items:

function loadScripts(){
   var directory = 'script/';
   var extension = '.js';
   var files = ['model', 'view', 'controller'];  
   for (var file of files){ 
       var path = directory + file + extension; 
       var script = document.createElement("script");
       script.src = path;
       document.body.appendChild(script);
   } 
 }