How to Conditionally Enqueue a JavaScript File in WordPress

Enqueuing is the WordPress way to add a stylesheet or JavaScript file on a page. We already published a Quick Guide about including your JavaScript in WordPress. This time, though, we’re adding an extra wrinkle: how do you only enqueue a JavaScript file on certain pages of your WordPress site. That’s the focus of this here Quick Guide.

There are lots of reasons you may want to conditionally enqueue a file. Some examples:

• You want a JavaScript pop-up to only appear on your homepage (or on all pages BUT your homepage)
• You only want a JS file or CSS ruleset on a certain page
• You only want to load a script or style for certain pages

All of these can be done with WordPress conditional tags. Here’s the video explaining how to do this:

How to Only Load a JavaScript File on Certain Pages in WordPress

1. If you’ve not already made written the action hook, start there. You can follow this Quick Guide for the sake of doing this.
2. We’re going to need to a if with a conditional tag. If you don’t know what conditional tag to use, check out the exhaustive Codex page of them. Some common and useful conditional tags:
   • is_single() tells you if you’re on a single-post or single-page view. Great of scripts that should only be on articles. Bonus: include a slug and it’ll only be shown on that specific one, like is_single('page-slug').
   • is_archive() tells your if the current page is displaying a set of archives, whether for an author, a tag, a date range, a category, etc.
   • is_home() is for when the front blog page is being display.
3. Wrap your wp_enqueue_script or wp_enqueue_style call in an if () {} block. The conditional tag (or tags) you’re going to use goes in the parenthesis. The wp_enqueue_script goes in the curly braces ({}).
4. You’re all set!

The power and simplicity of conditional tags is really great. I love how they read a lot like English! Hopefully this gets you a solid start.

Our Code for Conditionally Enqueuing a Script File

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'qg_enqueue');
function qg_enqueue() {
    if (is_home()) {
        wp_enqueue_script(
            'qgjs',
            plugin_dir_url(__FILE__).'quick-guide.js'
        );
    }
}

Further Reading on WPShout about Conditional Tags and Enqueuing Stylesheets or Scripts

https://wpshout.com/wordpresss-conditional-tags/

https://wpshout.com/everything-custom-scripts-styles-wordpress/

https://wpshout.com/quick-guides/use-wp_enqueue_script-include-javascript-wordpress-site/