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How To Add JavaScript To HTML

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3 views10 pages

How To Add JavaScript To HTML

Uploaded by

wanguieddie99
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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How To Add JavaScript to HTML

Introduction

JavaScript, also abbreviated to JS, is a programming language used in web


development. As one of the core technologies of the web alongside HTML
and CSS, JavaScript is used to make webpages interactive and to build web
apps. Modern web browsers, which adhere to common display standards,
support JavaScript through built-in engines without the need for additional
plugins.

When working with files for the web, JavaScript needs to be loaded and run
alongside HTML markup. This can be done either inline within an HTML
document or in a separate file that the browser will download alongside the
HTML document.

This tutorial will go over how to incorporate JavaScript into your web files,
both inline into an HTML document and as a separate file.

Adding JavaScript into an HTML Document


You can add JavaScript code in an HTML document by employing the
dedicated HTML tag <script> that wraps around JavaScript code.
The <script> tag can be placed in the <head> section of your HTML or in
the <body> section, depending on when you want the JavaScript to load.
Generally, JavaScript code can go inside of the document <head> section in
order to keep them contained and out of the main content of your HTML
document.
However, if your script needs to run at a certain point within a page’s layout —
like when using document.write to generate content — you should put it at the
point where it should be called, usually within the <body> section.
Let’s consider the following blank HTML document with a browser title
of Today's Date:
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">

<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-
scale=1">
<title>Today's Date</title>
</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>
Copy

Right now, this file only contains HTML markup. Let’s say we would like to add
the following JavaScript code to the document:
let d = new Date();
alert("Today's date is " + d);
Copy

This will enable the webpage to display an alert with the current date
regardless of when the user loads the site.

In order to achieve this, we will add a <script> tag along with some JavaScript
code into the HTML file.
To begin with, we’ll add the JavaScript code between the <head> tags,
signalling the browser to run the JavaScript script before loading in the rest of
the page. We can add the JavaScript below the <title> tags, for instance, as
shown below:
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-
scale=1">
<title>Today's Date</title>
<script>
let d = new Date();
alert("Today's date is " + d);
</script>
</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>
Copy

Once you load the page, you will receive an alert similar to this:
If we were modifying what is shown in the body of the HTML, we would need
to implement that after the <head> section so that it displays on the page, as in
the example below:
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">

<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-
scale=1">
<title>Today's Date</title>
</head>

<body>

<script>
let d = new Date();
document.body.innerHTML = "<h1>Today's date is " + d +
"</h1>"
</script>

</body>

</html>
Copy

The output for the above HTML document loaded through a web browser
would look similar to the following:
Scripts that are small or that run only on one page can work fine within an
HTML file, but for larger scripts or scripts that will be used on many pages, it is
not a very effective solution because including it can become unwieldy or
difficult to read and understand. In the next section, we’ll go over how to
handle a separate JavaScript file in your HTML document.

Working with a Separate JavaScript File


In order to accommodate larger scripts or scripts that will be used across
several pages, JavaScript code generally lives in one or more js files that are
referenced within HTML documents, similarly to how external assets like CSS
are referenced.

The benefits of using a separate JavaScript file include:


 Separating the HTML markup and JavaScript code to make both more
straightforward
 Separate files makes maintenance easier
 When JavaScript files are cached, pages load more quickly
To demonstrate how to connect a JavaScript document to an HTML
document, let’s create a small web project. It will consist of script.js in
the js/ directory, style.css in the css/ directory, and a main index.html in the
root of the project.
project/
├── css/
| └── style.css
├── js/
| └── script.js
└── index.html

We can start with our previous HTML template from the section above:
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">

<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-
scale=1">
<title>Today's Date</title>
</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>
Copy
Now, let’s move our JavaScript code that will show the date as an <h1> header
to the script.js file:
script.js
let d = new Date();
document.body.innerHTML = "<h1>Today's date is " + d + "</h1>"
Copy
We can add a reference to this script to the <body> section, with the following
line of code:
<script src="js/script.js"></script>
Copy
The <script> tag is pointing to the script.js file in the js/ directory of our web
project.
Let’s consider this line in the context of our HTML file, in this case, within
the <body> section:
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">

<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-
scale=1">
<title>Today's Date</title>
</head>

<body>

<script src="js/script.js"></script>

</body>

</html>
Copy
Finally, let’s also edit the style.css file by adding a background color and style
to the <h1> header:
style.css
body {
background-color: #0080ff;
}

h1 {
color: #fff;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
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We can reference that CSS file within the <head> section of our HTML
document:
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">

<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-
scale=1">
<title>Today's Date</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css">
</head>

<body>

<script src="js/script.js"></script>

</body>

</html>
Copy
Now, with the JavaScript and CSS in place we can load the index.html page
into the web browser of our choice. We should see a page that looks similar to
the following:
Now that we’ve placed the JavaScript in a file, we can call it in the same way
from additional web pages and update them all in a single location

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