How can I correctly reference javascript files in html? - html

I am trying to create a website and came across an interesting problem. I have my filesystem setup like this
.
I am trying to reference some javascript files inside my <head>like so
As you can see the first two files are found and will load
according to the browser
I have multiple problems with this, the first being that paths for the first two javascript files are actually not valid, since if I ctrl+click them it brings up an error message
that the file doesn't exist. The second problem is that the third and fourth javascript files are not loading into the browser. I've tried the following paths for them.
/WebRoot/Assets/Js/filename.js,
../WebRoot/Assets/Js/filename.js,
../../WebRoot/Assets/Js/filename.js
and even a direct path but none of them worked.
Does anybody have any idea why is this problem occurring?

Your script tags are broken. You have:
<script src=""> [filename] </script>`
instead of:
<script src="[filename]"></script>`
You also appear to have inconsistent casing in your paths.
Your filesystem appears to have /Js/ (lowercase 's') but in your html you have it both ways: sometimes it's /Assets/JS and sometimes it's /Assets/Js/. This might account for your non-existent file issue.
Case-sensitivity can vary between environments so this might work sometimes, but it's still A Bad Idea™. Pick your preference (uppercase, lowercase, or a mix) but be consistent when referencing file paths.

Related

In HTML, what is the difference between accessing JavaScript code locally and accessing it from a webpage?

I'm working with Bootstrap and I'm trying to use the bootstrap.min.js script found here.
In my code, if I use the following script tag everything works as expected:
<script src="http://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.6/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
Whereas if I save the code found at the above link into a file called bootstrap.min.js and run the following code, the script no longer works.
Note: I'm saving the bootstrap file one directory above where my HTML is saved.
<script src="../bootstrap.min.js"></script>
If the first option works what am I doing wrong (or not doing) to make the second not work?
I'm new to web development but from what I understand, when you use the script tags in HTML, all that happens is the script at the location specified in src=" " is run. Where in this case, both options seemingly point to the same code.
In answer to your title, I have to delve into practices and ways of work.
CDN's (using a script from a link) isn't generally a good idea for development, as you don't have that script when offline and anything relying on that will fall over. However, it saves space (as you don't store the script), and it is quite manageable as well (with regards to directories and building doesn't modify the paths etc.). In development, local files are a good idea. In production, however, it is a good idea to either use minified JS, or CDN's, for storage saving.
In answer to your question body, you have to get the path right (including the file name). ..\ goes to the parent directory to start off with, while .\ is the current directory. Also, the <script> reference tag has to be above all usages as the page is loaded from top to bottom. Take those tips and see what the issue is.

Including images in a Genshi/Trac template

I am trying to include some images in a Genshi template for my Trac plugin, but it always shows only the alternative text because it cannot find the images.
I have the following (X)HTML code:
<div>
<img src="file://c:/path/to/image.png" alt="asdf" />
</div>
When I use this code with a simple html file and open it in the browser, the image is displayed correctly, which means that both the path and syntax are correct.
But when I insert the code snippet into a Genshi template and use it within Trac, the image cannot be found. However, when I look at the HTML source code in the web browser and copy the URLs into a new browser tab, it is again displayed correctly. This means that only the server cannot find the image.
The images are in a directory inside the python-egg file, and the path points directly to the directory created by Trac, which also contains my CSS and HTML files, both of which are loaded correctly. The images are correctly referenced in the setup script which creates the egg.
How do I have to reference images in (X)HTML documents when using them with a server?
Is there a special way to include images in Genshi documents? (I haven't found one.)
Thanks to the comment of RjOllos and this site I was able to fix it by trying all of the URL types. Although it says for a plugin to be /chrome/<pluginname>, it was actually just /chrome that worked. See the edit below! So the full URL is then <ip>:<port>/chrome/path/to/image.png.
EDIT: I discovered I actually used the /chrome/pluginname version, just that I did not use the name of my plugin as "pluginname". See my comment below. It seems like /chrome/pluginname should actually be /chrome/htdocsnameor something like that, in case you use a different name rather than the plugin name when implementing the ITemplateProvider. In my case I called it images, which was the same name as the folder. END OF EDIT
Another mistake I made was forgetting the initial slash (chrome/path/to/image.png), which caused Trac to assemble the URL to <ip>:<port>/<current page>/chrome/path/to/image.png.

Is it bad practise to start links with "/" in html?

My website code sample:
<a href=/post/64/page-name><img src=/img-folder/2015/09/image.jpg></a>
<div id=cont2><a href=/post/64/page2>page 2 link</a></div>
My first question is, can I start links just with /? Is it a bad practise? because all website sources that I looked it starts with www.website.com/... not just /
Second question is quotes. It is not needed since html 2.0, but is it important in the example above?
My website is having some problems on google to show correctly... may it be because this problems?
It isn't bad practice. A URL starting with / is merely a relative URL that's relative the the base path. You're using it just fine.
Another example usage is when you want to reference a CSS or JavaScript file and you're deep down into the path.
<script src="/scripts/main.js"></script>
Then, no matter where the user is on your site, they'd always request http://example.com/scripts/main.js. Where example.com is your site's domain.
Additionally: Always quote attribute values. (attribute="value" and not attribute=value).
/ means start of where you are currently. So if your resource is located under same directory, you are allowed to use / to start with. If you refer to external resources, you can't use / to start. (E.g. www.google.com means google website, while /www.google.com means folder under your current directory named www.google.com, like http://localhost/www.google.com)
Quotes are needed when you use white-space in your attributes values (e.g. class="my super classs-name that has white-space" | class=my super classs-name that has white-space).
My website is having some problems on google to show correctly SEO stuff. What problems? Your page is not under first page of Google search? It's separate topic about that.
It is not forbidden. When you start your link with slash / it just a path relative to base element.
You can read more about BASE element here: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/links.html#h-12.4
For example, if you are already at: http://example.com/folder/index.html
/posts/index.html would link to: http://www.example.com/posts/index.html
posts/idnex.html would link to http://www.example.com/folder/posts/index.html
if you reference external sources you have to add the full path/adress
if you reference local resources its up to you.(more or less) take a llok at How to properly reference local resources in HTML?
You should use either double " or single ' qoutations - thats a good practise at least.
But you dont have to if there is no whitespace.
When you start your link with "/" its mean that you start from the root directory.
Example: Your website is in the directory /web/html.
When you now start your link with "/" its goes to the root folder. In this case the web folder.
I know this is old and answered, but it came up on Google when I was searching for something similar, so I just wanted to add to the answers.
Sometimes, when I need to do something real quick with simple HTML site that doesn't require a server, I usually just open index.html in Terminal to quickly preview the page in browser. However when you open your site like that, using the leading slash to load resources (ie. /js/main.js) won't work. That's because when you load your website by opening a file in your browser, the browser takes the root of your drive as the base path for your website.
So if you have your files like this for instance:
drive/Users/username/Documents/www/index.html
drive/Users/username/Documents/www/js/main.js
And you reference your script like this:
<script src="/js/main.js"></script>
The browser will think you're actually pointing here (if you open the file directly in browser):
drive/js/main.js
Because / in this case means drive and not the website's root (www in this case) folder as it would on a server.
Nope, it is not a bad habit to put '/' when starting links. But not having a quote in every html attribute? I don't think so. But i would suggest to put quote(") in every html attribute for it to be more readable.

Is there a way to export a page with CSS/images/etc using relative paths?

I work on a very large enterprise web application - and I created a prototype HTML page that is very simple - it is just a list of CSS and JS includes with very little markup. However, it contains a total of 57 CSS includes and 271 javascript includes (crazy right??)
In production these CSS/JS files will be minified and combined in various ways, but for dev purposes I am not going to bother.
The HTML is being served by a simple apache HTTP server and I am hitting it with a URL like this: http://localhost/demo.html and I share this link to others but you must be behind the firewall to access it.
I would like to package up this one HTML file with all referenced JS and CSS files into a ZIP file and share this with others so that all one would need to do is unzip and directly open the HTML file.
I have 2 problems:
The CSS files reference images using URLs like this url(/path/to/image.png) which are not relative, so if you unzip and view the HTML these links will be broken
There are literally thousands of other JS/CSS files/images that are also in these same folders that the demo doesn't use, so just zipping up the entire folder will result in a very bloated zip file
Anyway -
I create these types of demos on a regular basis, is there some easy way to create a ZIP that will:
Have updated CSS files that use relative URLs instead
Only include the JS/CSS that this html references, plus only those images which the specific CSS files reference as well
If I could do this without a bunch of manual work, if it could be automatic somehow, that would be so awesome!
As an example, one CSS file might have the following path and file name.
/ui/demoapp/css/theme.css
In this CSS file you'll find many image references like this one:
url(/ui/common/img/background.png)
I believe for this to work the relative image path should look like this:
url(../../common/img/background.png)
I am going to answer my own question because I have solved the problem for my own purposes. There are 2 options that I have found useful:
Modern browsers have a "Save Page As..." option under the File menu, or in Chrome on the one menu. This, however does not always work properly when the page is generated by javascript
I created my own custom application that can parse out all of the CSS/Javascript resources and transform the CSS references to relative URLs; however, this is not really a good answer for others.
If anyone else is aware of a commonly available utility or something like that which is better than using the browser built in "Save page as..." option - feel free to post another answer.

Server side include no longer seems to be working - "[an error occurred while processing this directive]"

We have a page that has been using a server side include for many years. Recently it stopped working. No changes have been made to the page
<!--#include virtual="..\..\includes\nav.include" -->
Near the bottom of a page called contact.html
The 'nav.include' page simply contains html for a navigation bar. No javascript. No server side scripting. Just html.
Is there some setting somewhere that needs to be set to make SSIs work in the way it is implemented here (including a file with an uncommon extension inside a html file)?
A solution that I discovered yesterday:
I duplicated and renamed all my pages to .php (retained the original html files just in case!)
I have replaced all the {<#include virtual="folder_name/file_name.ext" -->} with
<?php include "folder_name/file_name.ext" ; ?>
with the appropriate number of dots and slashes depending upon where the pages are in my folder hierarchy. ( The {} above is to mark out the code only)
Finally, I renamed the original index.html to some other name so that the index.php is picked up instead of the index.html
This seems to be working out - I am still testing out all the pages and links - a very tedious and time consuming exercise!
INCLUDES SYNTAX:
In a php file use
<?php include "..//folder_name/file_name.ext" ; ?>
In an html file use
<!--#include virtual="../folder_name/file_name.ext" -->
EXPERIMENT WITH NUMBER OF "..." AND NUMBER OF "///" IN THE ABOVE SYNTAX TO GET THE CORRECT COMBINATION!!!!
For me, all my includes are small html files in a folder ABC which is directly under the webroot.
For pages which are under sibling folders of ABC i.e. in other folders directly under webroot, "..//" is the number of dots and slashes that work.
For pages which are directly in the webroot (i.e. not in any folder inside webroot), folder_name/file_name.ext without any dots or slashes has worked.
I haven't had the time to check out the number of dots and dashes required for any other level in the hierarchy!
I hope this helps!
Are you using GoDaddy? They did the same to my site, and I found on their forums someone that said to use include file instead of include virtual.
Just switched over to Godaddy servers and my SSI stopped working. I made a .txt file with the following:
AddHandler server-parsed .html
I uploaded it to the public html folder, then renamed it .htaccess, and everything started working.
I had too many files to convert all the extensions to PHP, so I had to find another answer, if at all possible.
For me, for a little while, exchanging include virtual to include file seemed to help, but then it broke again after a few days. I guess GoDaddy was not finishing monkeying around with the SSI configuration. o_O
The solution, as of tonight, was to convert all relative paths to absolute specification in regards to the site root. For example, I had to convert:
<!--#include virtual="..\..\includes\nav.html" -->
To:
<!--#include virtual="\includes\nav.html" -->
Using this approach, I was able to include HTML files inside other HTML files.
I discovered this on one of my pages that mixed absolute and relative path specification.
HTH
I've been seeing this problem frequently on my GoDaddy hosted site. I have to go into the Server configuration page, disable SSI, save the settings, then re-enable SSI and check "Use SSI on .HTM and .HTML files) and it starts working again.
The problem is on GoDaddy's side. For some reason, it's forgetting that it needs to parse SSI in files, until you turn off and turn on that option. Their Tier-2 support only suggested using Virtual instead of File on the Include command... which is preposterous, since not only does that not change a thing, the SSI includes work just fine most of the time... until it doesn't.
I'm also updating old .html pages to .php and replacing some of the with php include statements on all pages when some of the pages displayed [an error occurred while processing this directive].
The pages displaying the error also referenced an old .ssi file that wasn't even in the directory it pointed to. I deleted the old includes code to the non-existent .ssi file in those pages, and that fixed the error.
This error occurs when you have in your code html documentation like this
<!--#My awesome documentatacion-->
to fix it remove the #, like this
<!-- My awesome documentatacion-->