document.createElement(“script”) synchronously

Question

Is it possible to call in a .js file synchronously and then use it immediately afterward?

Answer 1

The answers above pointed me in the right direction. Here is a generic version of what I got working:

  var script = document.createElement('script');
  script.src = 'http://' + location.hostname + '/module';
  script.addEventListener('load', postLoadFunction);
  document.head.appendChild(script);

  function postLoadFunction() {
     // add module dependent code here
  }      

Answer 2

This looks like a decent overview of dynamic script loading: http://unixpapa.com/js/dyna.html

Answer 3

You can create your <script> element with an "onload" handler, and that will be called when the script has been loaded and evaluated by the browser.

var script = document.createElement('script');
script.onload = function() {
  alert("Script loaded and ready");
};
script.src = "http://whatever.com/the/script.js";
document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script);

You can't do it synchronously.

edit — it's been pointed out that, true to form, IE doesn't fire a "load" event on <script> tags being loaded/evaluated. Thus I suppose the next thing to do would be to fetch the script with an XMLHttpRequest and then eval() it yourself. (Or, I suppose, stuff the text into a <script> tag you add; the execution environment of eval() is affected by the local scope, so it won't necessarily do what you want it to do.)

edit — As of early 2013, I'd strongly advise looking into a more robust script loading tool like Requirejs. There are a lot of special cases to worry about. For really simple situations, there's yepnope, which is now built into Modernizr.

Answer 4

This isn't pretty, but it works:

<script type="text/javascript">
  document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="other.js"></script>');
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
  functionFromOther();
</script>

Or

<script type="text/javascript">
  document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="other.js"></script>');
  window.onload = function() {
    functionFromOther();
  };
</script>

The script must be included either in a separate <script> tag or before window.onload().

This will not work:

<script type="text/javascript">
  document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="other.js"></script>');
  functionFromOther(); // Error
</script>

The same can be done with creating a node, as Pointy did, but only in FF. You have no guarantee when the script will be ready in other browsers.

Being an XML Purist I really hate this. But it does work predictably. You could easily wrap those ugly document.write()s so you don't have to look at them. You could even do tests and create a node and append it then fall back on document.write().

Answer 5

This works for modern 'evergreen' browsers that support async/await and fetch.

This example is simplified, without error handling, to show the basic principals at work.

// This is a modern JS dependency fetcher - a "webpack" for the browser
const addDependentScripts = async function( scriptsToAdd ) {

  // Create an empty script element
  const s=document.createElement('script')

  // Fetch each script in turn, waiting until the source has arrived
  // before continuing to fetch the next.
  for ( var i = 0; i < scriptsToAdd.length; i++ ) {
    let r = await fetch( scriptsToAdd[i] )

    // Here we append the incoming javascript text to our script element.
    s.text += await r.text()
  }

  // Finally, add our new script element to the page. It's
  // during this operation that the new bundle of JS code 'goes live'.
  document.querySelector('body').appendChild(s)
}

// call our browser "webpack" bundler
addDependentScripts( [
  'https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.1.slim.min.js',
  'https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.5.0/js/bootstrap.min.js'
] )