How to avoid 'cannot read property of undefined' errors?

Question

In my code, I deal with an array that has some entries with many objects nested inside one another, where as some do not. It looks something like the following:

Answer 1

This is a common issue when working with deep or complex json object, so I try to avoid try/catch or embedding multiple checks which would make the code unreadable, I usually use this little piece of code in all my procect to do the job.

/* ex: getProperty(myObj,'aze.xyz',0) // return myObj.aze.xyz safely
 * accepts array for property names: 
 *     getProperty(myObj,['aze','xyz'],{value: null}) 
 */
function getProperty(obj, props, defaultValue) {
    var res, isvoid = function(x){return typeof x === "undefined" || x === null;}
    if(!isvoid(obj)){
        if(isvoid(props)) props = [];
        if(typeof props  === "string") props = props.trim().split(".");
        if(props.constructor === Array){
            res = props.length>1 ? getProperty(obj[props.shift()],props,defaultValue) : obj[props[0]];
        }
    }
    return typeof res === "undefined" ? defaultValue: res;
}

Answer 2

If you have lodash you can use its .get method

_.get(a, 'b.c.d.e')

or give it a default value

_.get(a, 'b.c.d.e', default)

Answer 3

If you are using lodash, you could use their "has" function. It is similar to the native "in", but allows paths.

var testObject = {a: {b: {c: 'walrus'}}};
if(_.has(testObject, 'a.b.c')) {
  //Safely access your walrus here
}

Answer 4

Try this. If a.b is undefined, it will leave the if statement without any exception.

if (a.b && a.b.c) {
  console.log(a.b.c);
}

Answer 5

Lodash has a get method which allows for a default as an optional third parameter, as show below:

const myObject = {
  has: 'some',
  missing: {
    vars: true
  }
}
const path = 'missing.const.value';
const myValue = _.get(myObject, path, 'default');
console.log(myValue) // prints out default, which is specified above

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.11/lodash.js"></script>

Answer 6

I answered this before and happened to be doing a similar check today. A simplification to check if a nested dotted property exists. You could modify this to return the value, or some default to accomplish your goal.

function containsProperty(instance, propertyName) {
    // make an array of properties to walk through because propertyName can be nested
    // ex "test.test2.test.test"
    let walkArr = propertyName.indexOf('.') > 0 ? propertyName.split('.') : [propertyName];

    // walk the tree - if any property does not exist then return false
    for (let treeDepth = 0, maxDepth = walkArr.length; treeDepth < maxDepth; treeDepth++) {

        // property does not exist
        if (!Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(instance, walkArr[treeDepth])) {
            return false;
        }

        // does it exist - reassign the leaf
        instance = instance[walkArr[treeDepth]];

    }

    // default
    return true;

}

In your question you could do something like:

let test = [{'a':{'b':{'c':"foo"}}}, {'a': "bar"}];
containsProperty(test[0], 'a.b.c');