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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T02:37:05+00:00

If you do script src=/path/to/nonexistent/file.js in an HTML file and call that in a

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If you do script src=”/path/to/nonexistent/file.js” in an HTML file and call that in a browser, and there are no dependencies or resources anywhere else in the HTML file that expect the file or code therein to actually exist, is there anything inherently bad-practice about doing this?

Yes, it is an odd question. The rationale is the developer is dealing with a CMS that allows custom (self-contained) javascript files to be provided in certain circumstances. The problem is the CMS is not very flexible when it comes to creating conditional includes for javascript. Therefore it is easier to just make references to the self-contained js files regardless of whether they are actually at the specified path.

Since no errors are displayed to the user, should this practice be considered a viable option?

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  1. Editorial Team

    If you have the script referred to in the <head> tag, ( not recommended for starters ), it will slow down the initial page-render time somewhat too.

    If instead of quickly returning a 404, your site just accepts the connection and then never responds, this can cause the page to take an indefinite amount of time to load, and in some cases, lock up the entire user interface.

    ( At least that was the case with one revision of FireFox, I hope they’ve fixed it since I saw that happen ~2 years ago.* )

    You should at least put the tags as low in the page order as you can afford to to remedy this problem.

    Your best bet by far is to have one consistent no-op url that is used as a fill-in for all “doesn’t exist” JavaScript files, that returns a 0-byte response with HTTP headers telling the UA to cache it till the cows come home, that should negate most your server<->client load penalties beyond the first hit ( and that should hardly hurt people even on ye-olde dialup )

    *Lesson learned: don’t put script-src references in head, especially for 3rd-party scripts hosted outside your machine, because then you can have the joy of having clients be able to access your website, but run the risk of the page being inoperable because of a bit of advertising JS that was inaccessible due to some internet weirdness. Even if they’re a reputable-ish 3rd-party.

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