Adding script tag to React/JSX

Further to the answers above you can do this:

import React from 'react';

export default class Test extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
  }

  componentDidMount() {
    const s = document.createElement('script');
    s.type = 'text/javascript';
    s.async = true;
    s.innerHTML = "document.write('This is output by document.write()!')";
    this.instance.appendChild(s);
  }

  render() {
    return <div ref={el => (this.instance = el)} />;
  }
}

The div is bound to this and the script is injected into it.

Demo can be found on codesandbox.io


My favorite way is to use React Helmet – it's a component that allows for easy manipulation of the document head in a way you're probably already used to.

e.g.

import React from "react";
import {Helmet} from "react-helmet";

class Application extends React.Component {
  render () {
    return (
        <div className="application">
            <Helmet>
                <script src="https://use.typekit.net/foobar.js"></script>
                <script>try{Typekit.load({ async: true });}catch(e){}</script>
            </Helmet>
            ...
        </div>
    );
  }
};

https://github.com/nfl/react-helmet


Edit: Things change fast and this is outdated - see update


Do you want to fetch and execute the script again and again, every time this component is rendered, or just once when this component is mounted into the DOM?

Perhaps try something like this:

componentDidMount () {
    const script = document.createElement("script");

    script.src = "https://use.typekit.net/foobar.js";
    script.async = true;

    document.body.appendChild(script);
}

However, this is only really helpful if the script you want to load isn't available as a module/package. First, I would always:

  • Look for the package on npm
  • Download and install the package in my project (npm install typekit)
  • import the package where I need it (import Typekit from 'typekit';)

This is likely how you installed the packages react and react-document-title from your example, and there is a Typekit package available on npm.


Update:

Now that we have hooks, a better approach might be to use useEffect like so:

useEffect(() => {
  const script = document.createElement('script');

  script.src = "https://use.typekit.net/foobar.js";
  script.async = true;

  document.body.appendChild(script);

  return () => {
    document.body.removeChild(script);
  }
}, []);

Which makes it a great candidate for a custom hook (eg: hooks/useScript.js):

import { useEffect } from 'react';

const useScript = url => {
  useEffect(() => {
    const script = document.createElement('script');

    script.src = url;
    script.async = true;

    document.body.appendChild(script);

    return () => {
      document.body.removeChild(script);
    }
  }, [url]);
};

export default useScript;

Which can be used like so:

import useScript from 'hooks/useScript';

const MyComponent = props => {
  useScript('https://use.typekit.net/foobar.js');

  // rest of your component
}