Link and execute external JavaScript file hosted on GitHub

GitHub Pages is GitHub’s official solution to this problem.

raw.githubusercontent makes all files use the text/plain MIME type, even if the file is a CSS or JavaScript file. So going to https://raw.githubusercontent.com/‹user›/‹repo›/‹branch›/‹filepath› will not be the correct MIME type but instead a plaintext file, and linking it via <link href="..."/> or <script src="..."></script> won’t work—the CSS won’t apply / the JS won’t run.

GitHub Pages hosts your repo at a special URL, so all you have to do is check-in your files and push. Note that in most cases, GitHub Pages requires you to commit to a special branch, gh-pages.

On your new site, which is usually https://‹user›.github.io/‹repo›, every file committed to the gh-pages branch (the most recent commit) is present at this url. So then you can link to your js file via <script src="https://‹user›.github.io/‹repo›/file.js"></script>, and this will be the correct MIME type.

Do you have build files?

Personally, my recommendation is to run this branch parallel to master. On the gh-pages branch, you can edit your .gitignore file to check in all the dist/build files you need for your site (e.g. if you have any minified/compiled files), while keeping them ignored on your master branch. This is useful because you typically don’t want to track changes in build files in your regular repo. Every time you want to update your hosted files, simply merge master into gh-pages, rebuild, commit, and then push.

(protip: you can merge and rebuild in the same commit with these steps:)

$ git checkout gh-pages
$ git merge --no-ff --no-commit master  # prepare the merge but don’t commit it (as if there were a merge conflict)
$ npm run build                         # (or whatever your build process is)
$ git add .                             # stage the newly built files
$ git merge --continue                  # commit the merge
$ git push origin gh-pages

This is no longer possible. GitHub has explicitly disabled JavaScript hotlinking, and newer versions of browsers respect that setting.

Heads up: nosniff header support coming to Chrome and Firefox


There is a good workaround for this, now, by using jsdelivr.net.

Steps:

  1. Find your link on GitHub, and click to the "Raw" version.
  2. Copy the URL.
  3. Change raw.githubusercontent.com to cdn.jsdelivr.net
  4. Insert /gh/ before your username.
  5. Remove the branch name.
  6. (Optional) Insert the version you want to link to, as @version (if you do not do this, you will get the latest - which may cause long-term caching)

Examples:

http://raw.githubusercontent.com/<username>/<repo>/<branch>/path/to/file.js

Use this URL to get the latest version:

http://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/<username>/<repo>/path/to/file.js

Use this URL to get a specific version or commit hash:

http://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/<username>/<repo>@<version or hash>/path/to/file.js

For production environments, consider targeting a specific tag or commit-hash rather than the branch. Using the latest link may result in long-term caching of the file, causing your link to not be updated as you push new versions. Linking to a file by commit-hash or tag makes the link unique to version.

Why is this needed?

In 2013, GitHub started using X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff, which instructs more modern browsers to enforce strict MIME type checking. It then returns the raw files in a MIME type returned by the server, preventing the browser from using the file as-intended (if the browser honors the setting).

For background on this topic, please refer to this discussion thread.


rawgithub.com redirects to rawgit.com So the above example would now be

http://rawgit.com/user/package/master/link.min.js

Tags:

Javascript

Github

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