How to Enqueue Your Scripts Depending on Location

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As you probably know the best way to load scripts in WordPress is to use the wp_enqueue_script() function. However the process for loading scripts is slightly different depending on where you're calling the script from.
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As you probably know the best way to load scripts in WordPress is to use the wp_enqueue_script function. However the process for loading scripts is slightly different depending on where you’re calling the script from.

There are basically three possibilities:

From Inside a Parent Theme

[php]
wp_enqueue_script( ‘my-awesome-script’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/js/my-awesome-script.js’, array(‘jquery’), ‘1.0’ );
[/php]

In this case we use the get_template_directory_uri function

From Inside a Child Theme

[php]
wp_enqueue_script( ‘my-awesome-script’, get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . ‘/js/my-awesome-script.js’, array(‘jquery’), ‘1.0’ );
[/php]

From child themes, on the other hand, we need to use the get_stylesheet_directory_uri function which retrieves the stylesheet directory URI for the current theme/child theme.

From Inside a Plugin

[php]
wp_enqueue_script( ‘my-awesome-script’, plugins_url( ‘/js/my-awesome-script.js’, __FILE__ ), array(‘jquery’), ‘1.0’ );
[/php]

The plugins_url template tag retrieves the url to the plugins directory or to a specific file within that directory. You can hardcode the plugin slug in $path or pass __FILE__ as a second argument to get the correct folder name.

Code from Will Anderson’s speech on WordCamp.tv.

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Jean Galea

Jean Galea is an investor, entrepreneur, and blogger. He is the founder of WP Mayor, the plugins WP RSS Aggregator and Spotlight, as well as the Mastermind.fm podcast. His personal blog can be found at jeangalea.com.

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2 Responses

  1. Typo in snippet #3, missing single quote around ‘jquery’. Also, the fourth argument (the version) is expecting a string, but you’re giving it a float. It will work, but the 1.0 float converted to a string results in “1” and not “1.0” so you *might* eventually run into trouble:

    var_dump( version_compare( 1.0, ‘1.0’ ) ); // int(-1)

    I can’t think of an example right now, but I recommend to always use strings as version numbers. It has other advantages as well, such as “3.5-beta2” 🙂

    K

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