jQuery library location wants to be referenced differently on server

Question

I've got an ASP.NET MVC application that uses jQuery. To load the js libraries, I reference them like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="../../Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>

This works fine locally, but when I publish it to the server, it can't find the library. To get it to work, I have to change it to this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="../Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>

Making this change allows it to work locally and on the server, but it gives me a warning that the file was not found. So I've got a couple of questions:

1. How does the code work locally if I'm not referencing the correct library location?
2. What can I put for a script path that will work everywhere and not throw a warning?

I know an answer to #2 is to store the libraries in some known absolute path, but I'm not ready to commit to that yet.

Answer 1

The reason your code is working locally is because your local directory structure is different from your production directory structure.

That being said I believe that an absolute path to any external resources (javascript, images, and stylesheets) is best.

Answer 2

As Andrew says, your directory structure is totaly different. Have you considered using google's load library to load Jquery for you from the closet location to the user?

Answer 3

Have you tried referencing the file from the root url? I.e. instead of "../../", which has to crawl up a directoy, use "/Content/Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js". This would angnostic of your directory structure.

You should also consider using google to load jquery:

http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/

You'll get much better load times.

Mike

Answer 4

Try this:

<script type="text/javascript" src='<%= Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js") %>'></script>

This will relativize the path to the root of your application regardless of whether it is at the top level or in a virtual directory. I actually developed a HtmlHelper extension that lets clean this up to:

<%= Html.Javascript( Url.Content( "~/Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" )) %>

Add the following to get intellisense. This needs the relative path to work, but gets excluded at runtime because the condition (always) fails.

<% if (false) { %>
     <script type="text/javascript" src="../../Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.vsdoc.js"></script>
<% } %>