Adding script tag to React/JSX

Edit: Things change fast and this is outdated – see update


Do you want to fetch and execute the script again and again, every time this component is rendered, or just once when this component is mounted into the DOM?

Perhaps try something like this:

componentDidMount () {
    const script = document.createElement("script");

    script.src = "https://use.typekit.net/foobar.js";
    script.async = true;

    document.body.appendChild(script);
}

However, this is only really helpful if the script you want to load isn’t available as a module/package. First, I would always:

  • Look for the package on npm
  • Download and install the package in my project (npm install typekit)
  • import the package where I need it (import Typekit from 'typekit';)

This is likely how you installed the packages react and react-document-title from your example, and there is a Typekit package available on npm.


Update:

Now that we have hooks, a better approach might be to use useEffect like so:

useEffect(() => {
  const script = document.createElement('script');

  script.src = "https://use.typekit.net/foobar.js";
  script.async = true;

  document.body.appendChild(script);

  return () => {
    document.body.removeChild(script);
  }
}, []);

Which makes it a great candidate for a custom hook (eg: hooks/useScript.js):

import { useEffect } from 'react';

const useScript = url => {
  useEffect(() => {
    const script = document.createElement('script');

    script.src = url;
    script.async = true;

    document.body.appendChild(script);

    return () => {
      document.body.removeChild(script);
    }
  }, [url]);
};

export default useScript;

Which can be used like so:

import useScript from 'hooks/useScript';

const MyComponent = props => {
  useScript('https://use.typekit.net/foobar.js');

  // rest of your component
}

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