What's the best fallback if Google Ajax API is not available (since Google does not permit to install it locally)?

Question

In my site I have:

...
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
...

The script above is the Google script to load up other resources dynamically. (eg Google charts API)

This works 99.99% of the time. However, I just got a client that for some reasons got his company restricting access to google.com.

As a consequence of this my website simply threw a JavaScript error.

Now I know how to handle that, and I can check if window.Google exists. but my question is

"what's the standard way to deal with this? "

In other words if you embed 3rd party JavaScript how best do you deal with their JS not available?

NOTE: VERY IMPORTANT

You can not host the chart code locally or on an intranet.

SEE FAQ from Google: https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/faq#localdownload

Can I download and host the chart code locally, or on an intranet?

Sorry; our terms of service do not allow you to download and save or host the Google.load or Google.visualization code.

Answer 1

There is no real alternative. Due to Google's terms of service you cannot use Google API without access to google.com.

• Check the connection to Google and iform user that function is not available
• Develop your own or use non-google api. Still you can use Google if available

Answer 2

The solution is that your client's company review their content filtering policies. Google are quite clear in their previous answer concerning offline access:

…your computer must have live access to http://www.google.com/jsapi in order to use charts.

You are using a third-party solution according to their terms and conditions, which naturally imposes limits on how that solution may be used by your clients. You need to stand firm or find a more liberally-licensed solution. (At any rate, you are more likely to succeed at convincing your client's IT department than petitioning Google to change their TOS.)

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For the more general case of third party JS APIs that may not load but for which you are allowed to keep a local copy on your server, see this question.