Preloading images with jQuery

Question

Quick and easy:

function preload(arrayOfImages) {
    $(arrayOfImages).each(function(){
        $('<img/>')[0].src = this;
        // Alternatively you could use:
        // (new Image()).src = this;
    });
}

// Usage:

preload([
    'img/imageName.jpg',
    'img/anotherOne.jpg',
    'img/blahblahblah.jpg'
]);

Or, if you want a jQuery plugin:

$.fn.preload = function() {
    this.each(function(){
        $('<img/>')[0].src = this;
    });
}

// Usage:

$(['img1.jpg','img2.jpg','img3.jpg']).preload();

Here's a tweaked version of the first response that actually loads the images into DOM and hides it by default.

function preload(arrayOfImages) {
    $(arrayOfImages).each(function () {
        $('<img />').attr('src',this).appendTo('body').css('display','none');
    });
}

Use JavaScript Image object.

This function allows you to trigger a callback upon loading all pictures. However, note that it will never trigger a callback if at least one resource is not loaded. This can be easily fixed by implementing onerror callback and incrementing loaded value or handling the error.

var preloadPictures = function(pictureUrls, callback) {
    var i,
        j,
        loaded = 0;

    for (i = 0, j = pictureUrls.length; i < j; i++) {
        (function (img, src) {
            img.onload = function () {                               
                if (++loaded == pictureUrls.length && callback) {
                    callback();
                }
            };

            // Use the following callback methods to debug
            // in case of an unexpected behavior.
            img.onerror = function () {};
            img.onabort = function () {};

            img.src = src;
        } (new Image(), pictureUrls[i]));
    }
};

preloadPictures(['http://foo/picture.bar', 'http://foo/picture.bar', 'http://foo/picture.bar', 'http://foo/picture.bar'], function(){
    console.log('a');
});

preloadPictures(['http://foo/picture.bar', 'http://foo/picture.bar', 'http://foo/picture.bar', 'http://foo/picture.bar'], function(){
    console.log('b');
});

JP, After checking your solution, I was still having issues in Firefox where it wouldn't preload the images before moving along with loading the page. I discovered this by putting some sleep(5) in my server side script. I implemented the following solution based off yours which seems to solve this.

Basically I added a callback to your jQuery preload plugin, so that it gets called after all the images are properly loaded.

// Helper function, used below.
// Usage: ['img1.jpg','img2.jpg'].remove('img1.jpg');
Array.prototype.remove = function(element) {
  for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i++) {
    if (this[i] == element) { this.splice(i,1); }
  }
};

// Usage: $(['img1.jpg','img2.jpg']).preloadImages(function(){ ... });
// Callback function gets called after all images are preloaded
$.fn.preloadImages = function(callback) {
  checklist = this.toArray();
  this.each(function() {
    $('<img>').attr({ src: this }).load(function() {
      checklist.remove($(this).attr('src'));
      if (checklist.length == 0) { callback(); }
    });
  });
};

Out of interest, in my context, I'm using this as follows:

$.post('/submit_stuff', { id: 123 }, function(response) {
  $([response.imgsrc1, response.imgsrc2]).preloadImages(function(){
    // Update page with response data
  });
});

Hopefully this helps someone who comes to this page from Google (as I did) looking for a solution to preloading images on Ajax calls.

This one line jQuery code creates (and loads) a DOM element img without showing it:

$('<img src="img/1.jpg"/>');