javascript toolkit on text file

By Anatoly Mironov

May 13, 2012

Referencing javascript libraries from Content Delivery Networks (CDN) like jQuery can have many benefits. The self-hosted javascript files are on the other hand give you more control. But in one situation it is much better with cdns: the development. Like Marc D Anderson pointed:

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this txt file has become a standard part of my toolkit already. I’ve added it to three client environments just since last week. It’s the A #1 fastest way to get something up and running, even if you know you’re going to host the files locally later.

This kind of toolkits is really useful in situations where you have to quickly try/test some ideas without uploading multiple files to your server. Here comes my version of this javascript toolkit file:

<!--Add this to the webpart-->
<!--Inspiration got from sympmarc
http://sympmarc.com/2012/04/20/referencing-jquery-jqueryui-and-spservices-from-cdns/?utm\_source=rss&utm\_medium=rss&utm\_campaign=referencing-jquery-jqueryui-and-spservices-from-cdns
and Thorsten Hans:
https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/devwiki/articles/Pages/SharePoint-Development-Using-HeadJS-KnockoutJS-And-SPServices.aspx
-->

<!-- Reference the jQueryUI theme's stylesheet on the Google CDN. Here we're using the "Start" theme -->
<link  type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.18/themes/start/jquery-ui.css" />

<!-- Reference head.js on cdnjs (Cloudflare)-->
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/headjs/0.96/head.min.js"></script>

<!-- Load all other scripts async and run sync: -->
<script type="text/javascript">
	head.js("http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js",
		"http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.18/jquery-ui.min.js", 
		"http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery.templates/beta1/jquery.tmpl.min.js",
		"http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/knockout/2.0.0/knockout-min.js",
		"http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery.SPServices/0.7.1a/jquery.SPServices-0.7.1a.min.js",
		"my.js" );
</script>
```In my file I even use [head.js](http://headjs.com/) for loading multiple javascript files at the same time, like [Thorsten Hans described in his blog post](https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/devwiki/articles/Pages/SharePoint-Development-Using-HeadJS-KnockoutJS-And-SPServices.aspx). While using head.js you have to have your javascript code in a separate file and reference it in head.js as the last file. Otherwise your javascript code will be executed before jQuery is loaded and it will break the solution. If you want to have your code in the same file as your markup, you have to provide a callback function which will be run after all javascript files are loaded:

head.js("……", “….”, myCallback); function myCallback() { $("#div").text(“hej”); }