jQuery Pocket Reference

Ajax Utility Functions

The other high-level jQuery Ajax utilities are functions, not methods, and they are invoked directly through jQuery or $, not on a jQuery object. jQuery.getScript() loads and executes files of JavaScript code. jQuery.getJSON() loads a URL, parses it as JSON, and passes the resulting object to the specified callback. Both of these functions call jQuery.get(), which is a more general purpose URL-fetching function. Finally, jQuery.post() works just like jQuery.get() but performs an HTTP POST request instead of a GET. Like the load() method, all of these functions are asynchronous: they return to their caller before anything is loaded, and they notify you of the results by invoking a callback function that you specify.

jQuery.getScript()

The jQuery.getScript() function takes the URL of a file of JavaScript code as its first argument. It asynchronously loads and then executes that code in the global scope. It can work for both same-origin and cross-origin scripts:

// Dynamically load a script from some other server
jQuery.getScript("http://example.com/js/widget.js");

You can pass a callback function as the second argument, and if you do, jQuery will invoke that function once after the code has been loaded and executed:

// Load a library and use it once it loads
jQuery.getScript("js/jquery.my_plugin.js", function() {
    $('div').my_plugin();  // Use the library we loaded
});

jQuery.getScript() normally uses an XMLHttpRequest object to fetch the text of the script to be ...