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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-23T18:18:53+00:00

I have a javascript variable in the head of my dom and I need

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I have a javascript variable in the head of my dom and I need to access it in an external js file but it seems to come up undefined.

In my head I have something like.

 <head>
<script type="text/javascript">
    var overlayAlignment = ["left:20px","right:40px","left:50px"];
</script>
    </head>

external .js file

$(document).ready(function () {
alert(overlayAlignment[0]);
});

In my external js file I want to use the variable but something like this comes up undefined all the time, any idea what I am doing wrong.

I found that I could run a function from the external .js in the head to set the overlayAlignment variable if I add the overlayAlignment variable to the .js file. 

 <head>
<script type="text/javascript">
    setOverlayAlignment("value1", "value2", "values3");
</script>
</head>

external .js file

function setOverlayAlignment(value1, value2, value3) {
    overlayalignment[0] = value1;
    overlayalignment[1] = value2;
    overlayalignment[2] = value3;
}

This still comes up as undefined when I try to use it in my jquery function however. Strange, I thought $(document).ready was to tell the function to wait till the dom is loaded to run, if that is the case why is overlayAlignment undefined when it runs?

I need to do it like this because the overlayAlignment variable values are only known at runtime.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Weird just tried this and it worked. Strange I thought window.onload and $(document).ready were the same thing.

    window.onload = function () {
    $(document).ready(function () {
        alert(overlayAlignment[0]);
    });
}

    Apparently overlayAlignment was not ready when $(document).ready was called but it will be available after window.onload.

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