Using jQuery within Opera User JavaScript

Question

I wonder if it's possible to load jQuery within Opera User JavaScript, so that I can use jQuery functionality in it, even on pages that are not currently using jQuery.

Answer 1

I just wrote an Opera userJS, which I transformed from a Google Chrome extension, where jQuery could easy be loaded, but here in Opera I had to use another solution, and I wanted to make minimal changes in my code.

I just append a new script tag in the document's header with a working jQuery source. It starts to get downloaded BEFORE DOM is ready.

This is my working solution, hope that helps!

// ==UserScript==
// @name This is the name of my userJS
// @description That's the description of my userJS
// @include http://blahblah.hu/*
// @include http://*.blahblah.hu/*
// @match http://blahblah.hu/*
// @match http://*.blahblah.hu/*
// @version 1.0
// ==/UserScript==

(function( ) {

    // include jQuery
    var headID = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];         
    var newScript = document.createElement('script');
    newScript.type = 'text/javascript';
    newScript.id = 'myjQuery';
    newScript.src = 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.1/jquery.min.js';
    headID.appendChild(newScript);

    window.addEventListener('load', function (e)  {

        // you can write your jQuery code now!
        $('#yourElementId').css('background-color', 'yellow');

        // further jQuery codes
        // ...

    }, false);

})( );

Answer 2

Well it would certainly be possible if you paste the whole lot of jQuery into your UserJS file, or perhaps create a separate UserJS file for all pages with the jQuery library. However, there's a possibility that it would conflict with any pages using jQuery.

Depending on your requirements, maybe you could roll your own mini-framework? For example some simple functions to grab elements by tag/class/id:

function $id(id) {
  return document.getElementById(id);
}

Note: you may get a better response over at Opera's forums.