Speed up the Javascript file loading in your site

There is a nice technique to reduce the amount of calls your browsers has to make to the server. This will be every image, every css and every JavaScript file included in the webpage. Each time you want to load in one of these elements you will be sending a request to the server which will return the requested object known as a HTTP request.

Reduce Page Loading Time With PHP

Each one of these uses up time on your page loading, so to reduce page load all you have to do is reduce the amount of calls being made. But what if you want to organise you JavaScript files, jquery file, general file, application file and page file. There could be upto 4 requests for some javascript for the page.

It is possible in PHP to combine these JavaScript files together and trick the browser into thinking they are just one JavaScript file, therefore reducing the amount of calls being made to the server. This is done by reading the JavaScript with PHP then changing the header to JavaScript like the example below.

Create a PHP file and use the readfile function to bring in your Javascript files then change the header to Javascript and the server will treat this page as Javascript.

readfile(jquery.js’);

readfile(general.js’);

readfile(jquery-ui.js’);

readfile(page.js’);

header(‘Content-type: text/javascript’);