Javascript ASK: tags – how should my site handle ocassionally missing javascript files gracefully?

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

tags – how should my site handle ocassionally missing javascript files gracefully?

Say I\’ve got this script tag on my site (borrowed from SO).


<script type=\"text/javascript\" async=\"\" 
      src=\"http://edge.quantserve.com/quant.js\"></script>

If edge.quantserve.com goes down or stops responding without returning a 404, won\’t SO have to wait for the timeout before the rest of the page loads? I\’m thinking Chaos Monkey shows up and blasts a server that my site is depending on, a server that isn\’t part of a CDN and has a poor failover.

What\’s the industry standard way to handle this issue? I couldn\’t find a dupe on SO, maybe I\’m searching for the wrong terms.

Update: I should have looked a bit more closely at the SO code, there\’s this at the bottom:


<script type=\"text/javascript\">var _gaq=_gaq||[];_gaq.push([\'_setAccount\',\'UA-5620270-1\']);
        _gaq.push([\'_setCustomVar\', 2, \'accountid\', \'14882\',2]); 
_gaq.push([\'_trackPageview\']);
    var _qevents = _qevents || [];
    (function(){
        var s=document.getElementsByTagName(\'script\')[0];
        var ga=document.createElement(\'script\');
        ga.type=\'text/javascript\';
        ga.async=true;
        ga.src=\'http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js\';
        s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga,s);
        var sc=document.createElement(\'script\');
        sc.type=\'text/javascript\';
        sc.async=true;
        sc.src=\'http://edge.quantserve.com/quant.js\'; 
        s.parentNode.insertBefore(sc,s);
    })();
    </script>