Preloading images with jQuery

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I'm looking for a quick and easy way to preload images with JavaScript. I'm using jQuery if that's important.

I saw this here (http://nettuts.com...):

function complexLoad(config, fileNames) {
  for (var x = 0; x < fileNames.length; x++) {
    $("<img>").attr({
      id: fileNames[x],
      src: config.imgDir + fileNames[x] + config.imgFormat,
      title: "The " + fileNames[x] + " nebula"
    }).appendTo("#" + config.imgContainer).css({ display: "none" });
  }
};

But, it looks a bit over-the-top for what I want!

I know there are jQuery plugins out there that do this but they all seem a bit big (in size); I just need a quick, easy and short way of preloading images!

20 Answers

Quick and easy:

function preload(arrayOfImages) {
    $(arrayOfImages).each(function(){
        $('<img/>')[0].src = this;
        // Alternatively you could use:
        // (new Image()).src = this;
    });
}

// Usage:

preload([
    'img/imageName.jpg',
    'img/anotherOne.jpg',
    'img/blahblahblah.jpg'
]);

Or, if you want a jQuery plugin:

$.fn.preload = function() {
    this.each(function(){
        $('<img/>')[0].src = this;
    });
}

// Usage:

$(['img1.jpg','img2.jpg','img3.jpg']).preload();

JP, After checking your solution, I was still having issues in Firefox where it wouldn't preload the images before moving along with loading the page. I discovered this by putting some sleep(5) in my server side script. I implemented the following solution based off yours which seems to solve this.

Basically I added a callback to your jQuery preload plugin, so that it gets called after all the images are properly loaded.

// Helper function, used below.
// Usage: ['img1.jpg','img2.jpg'].remove('img1.jpg');
Array.prototype.remove = function(element) {
  for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i++) {
    if (this[i] == element) { this.splice(i,1); }
  }
};

// Usage: $(['img1.jpg','img2.jpg']).preloadImages(function(){ ... });
// Callback function gets called after all images are preloaded
$.fn.preloadImages = function(callback) {
  checklist = this.toArray();
  this.each(function() {
    $('<img>').attr({ src: this }).load(function() {
      checklist.remove($(this).attr('src'));
      if (checklist.length == 0) { callback(); }
    });
  });
};

Out of interest, in my context, I'm using this as follows:

$.post('/submit_stuff', { id: 123 }, function(response) {
  $([response.imgsrc1, response.imgsrc2]).preloadImages(function(){
    // Update page with response data
  });
});

Hopefully this helps someone who comes to this page from Google (as I did) looking for a solution to preloading images on Ajax calls.

This one line jQuery code creates (and loads) a DOM element img without showing it:

$('<img src="img/1.jpg"/>');

I usually use this snippet of code on my projects for the loading of the images in a page. You can see the result here https://jsfiddle.net/ftor34ey/

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

<img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50020763321_d61d49e505_k_d.jpg" width="100" />
<img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50021019427_692a8167e9_k_d.jpg" width="100" />
<img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50020228418_d730efe386_k_d.jpg" width="100" />
<img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50020230828_7ef175d07c_k_d.jpg" width="100" />

<div style="background-image: url(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50020765826_e8da0aacca_k_d.jpg);"></div>
<style>
    .bg {
        background-image: url("https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50020765651_af0962c22e_k_d.jpg");
    }
</style>
<div class="bg"></div>

<div id="loadingProgress"></div>

The script save in an array all the src and background-image of the page and load all of them.

You can see/read/show the progress of the loading by the var loadCount.

let backgroundImageArray = [];

function backgroundLoading(i) {

    let loadCount = 0;

    let img = new Image();
    $(img).on('load', function () {

        if (i < backgroundImageArray.length) {

            loadCount = parseInt(((100 / backgroundImageArray.length) * i));
            backgroundLoading(i + 1);

        } else {

            loadCount = 100;
            // do something when the page finished to load all the images
            console.log('loading completed!!!');
            $('#loadingProgress').append('<div>loading completed!!!</div>');

        }

        console.log(loadCount + '%');
        $('#loadingProgress').append('<div>' + loadCount + '%</div>');

    }).attr('src', backgroundImageArray[i - 1]);

}

$(document).ready(function () {

    $('*').each(function () {

        var backgroundImage = $(this).css('background-image');
        var putInArray = false;

        var check = backgroundImage.substr(0, 3);

        if (check == 'url') {

            backgroundImage = backgroundImage.split('url(').join('').split(')').join('');
            backgroundImage = backgroundImage.replace('"', '');
            backgroundImage = backgroundImage.replace('"', '');

            if (backgroundImage.substr(0, 4) == 'http') {
                backgroundImage = backgroundImage;
            }
            putInArray = true;

        } else if ($(this).get(0).tagName == 'IMG') {

            backgroundImage = $(this).attr('src');
            putInArray = true;

        }

        if (putInArray) {
            backgroundImageArray[backgroundImageArray.length] = backgroundImage;
        }

    });

    backgroundLoading(1);

});
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