Javascript equivalent of Rails try method

Question

In Rails I can do this:

 x = user.try(:name)

this method returns nil if user is nil else user.name

Answer 1

Optional Chaining Operator

Is a new proposal for ECMAScript.

It is in an early stage but we can start using it with babel.

This is the problem:

const person = {name: 'santiago'}
let zip = person.address.zip // Cannot read property 'zip' of undefined

This is how it works:

const person = {name: 'santiago'}
let zip = person?.address?.zip // undefined

To start using it we need babel alpha 7:

npm install --save-dev babel-cli@7.0.0-alpha.19
npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-transform-optional-chaining@^7.0.0-alpha.13.1

And we need to add the plugin to our .babelrc

{
  "plugins": ["transform-optional-chaining"]
}

Adam Bene Medium Post which explains how to use it and another use cases