Question: I admit it, I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm attempting to learn how to use SignalR and I'm following various samples online almost verbatim and I can't get pasted $.connection being undefined. I'm working in MVC 4.0 and trying to use either nuget-downloaded signalR js files or those from sample projects. These are my script references.

```
@Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/jquery-1.7.2.min.js")
@Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/knockout-2.0.0.js")
@Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/jquery.signalR.js")
@Scripts.Render("~/signalr/hubs")

```

The scripts seem to load - I've even put alerts at the start of them which fire, but $.connection is always undefined. 

In a bizarre turn of events, I have a different project where I'm trying to use a different jQuery library and it uses $. and that object is ALSO always undefined. 

I'm just looking for any possible explanation of what I might be doing wrong. Thanks very much in advance.

Answer: 
I got the same problem today.

Your answer pointed me in the right direction, because I had the EXACT same setup for script loading.

I had all my script tags on the top of the page (head) in the following order.

* JQuery
* SignalR
* /signalr/hubs
* my-script.js

And of course, the @Layout.cshtml was so thoughtful to add `@Scripts.Render("~/bundles/jquery")` at the bottom of the `<body>` tag.

**Here's what's happening.**

In this configuration, when the page loads, it loads up all the scripts in the head tag, in the order they're specified.

so it loads JQuery, then SignalR, which setup `$.connection` then the auto-generated hubs script which sets up the `$.connection.hubName`,then the site's custom script.

At this point your custom code runs. BUT your code at some point, waits for the `body.onload` or `document.onReady` before accessing the `$.connection`

By the time this event fires, the script bundle which the Layout template added for you at the end of body tag also downloads and executes. This bundle has the jquery library again.... which resets everything SignalR setup on `$` and now your `$.connection` is not defined anymore.

**How to Solve It**

Easy fix, make sure you don't load JQuery twice, once before SignalR and once after SignalR. I moved all my scripts to load after the bundle and it fixed the issue. Best practice here is to use the 'scripts' section provided by the template.

```
@section scripts{
    @*/* load your scripts here. You can exclude jQuery, 
      coz it's already in the template */ *@
}

```

So this is not a SignalR error at all...

That's 2 hours of my life... I'll never get back ... 

Hope This Helps.
I solved the problem. I know what I did but I don't know why it worked for sure.

I was referencing the main jquery library (version 1.7.2) at the top of the \_Layout.cshtml view, but was not referencing any other jquery scripts. I noticed that by default in the layout view it was loading 

```
@Scripts.Render("~/bundles/jquery") 

```

at the bottom of the view and that a scripts section was located below that.

```
@RenderSection("scripts", required:false)

```

I further changed my script references as shown and put my script references shown in the question above inside a 

```
@section scripts
{    
   @Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/jquery.signalR-0.5.1.js")
   @Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/jquery.color.js")
   @Scripts.Render("~/signalr/hubs")
   @Scripts.Render("~/Scripts/blasht.signalr.js")
}

```

wrapper on my view so that they would be included after the bundles were loaded. I assume that I was not loading all the necessary jquery because now it works.

Now if I can figure out how this applies to my other projects.