Relative Paths in Javascript in an external file

JavaScript file paths

When in script, paths are relative to displayed page

to make things easier you can print out a simple js declaration like this and using this variable all across your scripts:

Solution, which was employed on StackOverflow around Feb 2010:

<script type="text/javascript">
   var imagePath = 'http://sstatic.net/so/img/';
</script>

If you were visiting this page around 2010 you could just have a look at StackOverflow's html source, you could find this badass one-liner [formatted to 3 lines :) ] in the <head /> section


get the location of your javascript file during run time using jQuery by parsing the DOM for the 'src' attribute that referred it:

var jsFileLocation = $('script[src*=example]').attr('src');  // the js file path
jsFileLocation = jsFileLocation.replace('example.js', '');   // the js folder path

(assuming your javascript file is named 'example.js')


A proper solution is using a css class instead of writing src in js file. For example instead of using:

$(this).css("background", "url('../Images/filters_collapse.jpg')");

use:

$(this).addClass("xxx");

and in a css file that is loaded in the page write:

.xxx {
  background-image:url('../Images/filters_collapse.jpg');
}

Good question.

  • When in a CSS file, URLs will be relative to the CSS file.

  • When writing properties using JavaScript, URLs should always be relative to the page (the main resource requested).

There is no tilde functionality built-in in JS that I know of. The usual way would be to define a JavaScript variable specifying the base path:

<script type="text/javascript">

  directory_root = "http://www.example.com/resources";

</script> 

and to reference that root whenever you assign URLs dynamically.