Should I use Google's JSAPI in production code?

Question

Possible duplicate of:

should-i-link-to-google-apis-cloud-for-js-libraries

also many other discussions, including:

Where do you include the jQuery library from? Google JSAPI? CDN? Best way to use Google's hosted jQuery, but fall back to my hosted library on Google fail

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I was looking at the Tiny MCE plugin example and saw this code in the head of the document:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    google.load("jquery", "1.3");
</script>

I've never seen this way to load jQuery.

• Is this recommended for production?
• What is the benefit of this method?

Answer 1

Yes, definitely. Google encourages it. Everyone benefits. It's more likely to be in their cache, and it's one less file that you have to serve.

Answer 2

As others have pointed out answering similar questions, there's a downside. In some countries (such as Iran), these are apparently blocked, breaking the website.

Answer 3

The benefit is it's hosted on googles super low latency and fast servers. you can also just use

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js”></script>

its the same effect.

Answer 4

keep in mind that google jsapi loads the scripts only after the document itself is loaded.

So, if (for example) you are using jquery's $(document).ready() in your web app, you'll have to switch to google.setOnLoadCallback().