Javascript .js loading issue - javascript

I am editing an existing site, which is a typical merchant site. A series of PHP files with one main index that loads in the various content pages.
The main index.php, using <script>, loads in jsFunctions.js.
When ever I modify the jsFunctions.js file, the index only loads the jsFunctions.js partially. For example I will get a firebug error such as 'unterminated string literal' or 'missing end }' or similar. The errors themselves make sense, because the js file isn't fully loading, a brace or quote is missing and throwing an error. It is seemingly random, sometimes it will load 100 lines of the js, then sometimes 105 lines, etc.
But why would the file be partially loading if i edit it? If i remove the single line of my code, no matter how simple, it starts working again?
Any ideas?

Are you editing a file with inconsistent line-endings, which editor? Issues like line-ending or weird unicode characters cause the issues like you've described.
I would take the contents of the file after your edit do a copy/paste exact as it is to JSLint: http://www.jslint.com/
JSLint is a validation tool for your script, before checking for best practices though, it'll check that your script is valid at all. See if you get the same error, it could be a weird character that's slipped in there causing issues, JSLint will alert you to this and where it's at.

Apparently it was some kind of server serving issue. If I refreshed a random amount of times, the full js would load. Once loaded it works 100% after that, well until I uploaded a new copy, then I would have to refresh a couple of times (or possibly wait 1-2 mins).
Filezilla was showing that the upload was complete, but the server simply didn't seem ready to output it.
Thanks guys

Related

JavaScript: Unexpected End of Input... because it's only loading part of the file?

Strange error here: I have a page that's referencing several JavaScript files. Occasionally, the browser will complain of:
Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected end of input
However, it doesn't appear to be due to a missing parent, or malformed JSON. Part of the JavaScript file will load, but the program will just stop loading the rest of the file. Example: half of the file will load, with the other half missing.
Most of the time, the files load and everything works. Any idea why I would occasionally be getting this error, rather than every time (as expected with a missing paren or something similar)? Other things I can check?
EDIT:
This is a Rails project (Rails version 3.2).
The JS files are standalone, and are kept in the pub directory for dev. In other words, they are NOT included in the asset pipeline.
There must be braces not closed properly.The file stops loading whenever the error is encountered and leaves the rest part unloaded as because of error.
You can check this example here

Why the copied HTML doesn't look like the original HTML?

I copied the generated source code (View Source -> View Generated Source in the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar) of Google's Keyword Tool page to a new HTML file.
But, when I open this new file, some of the items looks stretched for some reason:
The original website looks like this:
I guess that Google create some elements and set various attributes using Javascript, but I copied the page after it has been generated. So, why is this difference?
UPDATE 1
The only JS/CSS file, which is not given as a full path, is:
<script language="javascript" src="/cues/cues.js">
I tried replace this with:
<script language="javascript">
Contents of '/cues/cues.js' here
</script>
but it didn't help.
UPDATE 2
In the browser's error console I found the following 2 errors:
Error: com_google_ads_apps_servers_cues_CuesRelease is not defined
Source File: https://adwords.google.com/cues/768DAEDDB2193AB5B05B9C6A01394D78.cache.js
Line: 1
Error: com_google_ads_apps_targetingideas_client_TargetingIdeas is not defined
Source File: https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/756D6AF3BB4DD4A68315E34F50C2BC7E.cache.js
Line: 1
Any ideas why these errors appear?
UPDATE 3
Apparently, the reason is that the DOCTYPE declaration is missing. After I added <!DOCTYPE html> to the stretched version, it solved the problem. Can anyone explain why?
When you save a page, you only get the version of HTML served from the server in its original form. Any mods to the DOM made after load using JS will not be part of the save.
EDIT
I could not trace out the exact reason for the error as the code is really cryptic! In any case, if all you want is to be able to reproduce the exact page offline, then you can do a 'save page as..' from your browser (choose web page, complete). I tried this with FF as well as Chrome and it is working fine in both cases. While opening the saved page, it might be best not to use IE as its a certified choker when it comes to even the slightest error in code. :)
The most likely reason for the error is an cross-domain AJAX security exception (fired when the calling client side script and called server side script are from different domains). The 2 variables namely, com_google_ads_apps_servers_cues_CuesRelease and com_google_ads_apps_targetingideas_client_TargetingIdeas seems to be initialized using the return of some AJAX call (which couldn't execute bcoz of the secu excep), and as a result remain as undefined.
You must be missing some css and js which is not on the page but referred from somewhere else.
The most probable reason is that the CSS and the corresponding images that might be referred within it are not getting applied correctly.
Check the paths of the CSS and for the images (background) within the CSS...You might need to correct the paths to fix the issue.

File Encoding - Mysterious "?" Mark and "ILLEGAL Token" Error Messages

Come across this once in awhile.
Unpacked a zip file sent to me by a coworker. Loaded it up on my tomcat server to find out that there's this weird question mark at the beginning of the included JS file, preventing the JS file from being included properly.
I resaved the HTML file and the JS as new files and made sure encoding was UTF-8 and the line breaks were UNIX style.
Now I see the "ILLEGAL Token" error in Chrome and FF. Any ideas why?
EDIT:
Adding JS that is causing the issue. Anything inherently wrong with this? Per a comment, I think the removal of BOM fixed the issue but still getting the "ILLEGAL Token" message.
if(typeof deconcept=="undefined"){var deconcept=new Object();}
Hard to say with much confidence, but weird characters at the start of text files are very often the Byte Order Mark (BOM). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_Order_Mark. Some software handles them well, and you see nothing, other software doesn't handle them correctly and you see weird characters.

IE6 Javascript problems with $Revision$ in the filename

We recently started using SVN Keywords to automatically append the current revision number to all our <script src="..."> includes (so it looks like this: <script language="javascript" src="some/javascript.js?v=$Revision: 1234 $"> </script>). This way each time we push a new copy of the code to production, user caches won't cause users to still be using old script revisions.
It works great, except for IE6. For some reason, IE6 sporadically acts as though some of those files didn't exist. We may get weird error statements like "Unterminated String Literal on line 1234," but if you try to attach a debugger process to it, it won't halt on this line (if you say "Yes" to the debugger prompt, nothing happens, and page execution continues). A log entry for it shows up in IIS logs, indicating the user is definitely receiving the file (status code 200, with the appropriate amount of bytes transferred).
It also only seems to happen when the pages are served over https, not over standard http. To further compound things, it doesn't necessarily happen all the time; you might refresh a page 5 times and everything works, then you might refresh it 20 more times and it fails every time. For most users it seems to always work or else to always fail. It is even unpredictable when you have multiple users in a corporate environment whose security and cache settings are forcibly identical.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, this has been driving me crazy for weeks.
Check your log with fiddler2 to make sure the browser request the page, and do not use the cache instead. Also check the URL of the JS script and the header returned.
Are you using GZip? There has been issues reported with it.
I would suggest testing using Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image. That way, you can do your tests with a 100% IE6, and not one of those plugin that claims to simulate IE6 inside another browser.
I think this is a very clever idea. However, I think the issue could be related to the spaces in the url. Technically, the url should have the spaces encoded.
See if you can customize the keywords in SVN to generate a revision number without special characters.

Partial Javascript Statements Logged To Server

I have some code that generates URLs to be used in various places across a site (image src, link hrefs, etc). I am seeing lines in the access logs which show some of the javascript code that generates the URLs masquerading as a file request.
For example, "/this.getIconSrc()" is one that I'm seeing quite a bit. I can't figure out how or why this is occurring and I can't manage to reproduce it without actually entering "http://whateverthesiteis.com/this.getIconSrc()" into the location bar. In most cases, these functions are chained together to generate a URL but the whole function chain does not appear in the server logs, just part of it.
I've probably invested around 30 hours trying to figure out why this is happening but cannot. It doesn't appear to be a browser issue as I've tried in IE 6/7, FF 2/3, Opera, Safari 3, and the problem does not occur. Has anyone else experienced something similar and, if so, what was the solution?
There's three possibilities really:
A bug in your HTML - malformed HTML causing onclick to leak into href, for example
A bug in your Javascript - myIcon.src = 'this.getIconSrc()'; - note the quotes that shouldn't be there
A poorly-written spider is hitting your site (like #Diodeus said: ___)
Edit:
Check the User Agent and Referrer in your logs - they may offer a clue.
Are you generating JavaScript calls like this? This may explain it.
___
#RoBorg... I'm thinking the most likely scenario is #3 since this particular function is actually only called in one place...
function whatever(){
var src = this.getIconSrc();
return src.replace( /((?:https?:\/\/)?(?:[^\/]+\/)*)[^\/]+/, '$1newimage.png' );
}

Categories