Include Jquery libraries in wordpress theme?

Question

I have a file in my theme's JS folder named cycle2.js.

1. How do I include the Jquery from 'wordpress→includes' into my theme?

2. How do I load this custom JavaScript file 'cycle2.js' into my theme?

   I have:

   function watercolor_js_scripts(){
   if (!is_admin()) {
   
       wp_register_script('cycle2', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/cycle2.js', 'jquery', TRUE);
   
       wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery' );
       wp_enqueue_script( 'cycle2' );
   
   }
   add_action('init', 'watercolor_js_scripts');
   }
   

I can't understand any of the many explanations of this. Can some please just provide a copy/paste solution to throw into functions.php that will include the basic Jquery library included with WordPress & the cycle2.js file in my theme's js folder?

Answer 1

Your snippet seems mostly ok, except that dependency is a list and should be array('jquery'). Also wp_enqueue_scripts should be use as more appropriate.

You can check out Codex documentation for a complete example, see Example of Automatic Dependency Loading.

Answer 2

SOLVED: can't figure out the best way to update my question, sorry! Thank you Rarst the link you provided helped me figure this out:

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'watercolor_js_scripts');

function watercolor_js_scripts(){

    if (!is_admin()) {

        wp_register_script('cycle2', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/cycle2.js', array('jquery'), TRUE);

        wp_enqueue_script( 'cycle2', get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/js/cycle2.js', array( 'jquery', 'my-script' ) );
}

}