The “cannot read property of undefined” error happens when you try to access a property or method of a variable that is undefined. To fix it, add an undefined check on the variable before you access it.
Depending on your scenario, doing any one of the following might resolve the error:
- Add an
undefinedcheck on the variable before you access it. - Get the property/method from a replacement for the
undefinedvariable. - Use a fallback result instead of accessing the property.
- Check your code to find out why the variable is
undefined.
1. Add undefined check on variable
To fix the “cannot read property of undefined” error, check that the value is not undefined before accessing the property.
For example, in this code:
const auth = undefined;
console.log(auth); // undefined
// ❌ TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'user')
console.log(auth.user.name);
We can fix the error by adding an optional chaining operator (?.) on the variable before accessing a property. If the variable is undefined or null, the operator will return undefined immediately and prevent property access.
const auth = undefined;
console.log(auth); // undefined
// ✅ No error
console.log(auth?.user?.name); // undefined
The optional chaining operator also works when using bracket notation for property access:
const auth = undefined;
console.log(auth); // undefined
// ✅ No error
console.log(auth?.['user']?.['name']); // undefined
This means that we can use it on arrays:
const arr = undefined;
console.log(arr?.[0]); // undefined
// Array containing an object
console.log(arr?.[2]?.prop); // undefinedNote
Before the optional chaining was available, the only way we could avoid this error was to manually check for the truthiness of every containing object of the property in the nested hierarchy, i.e.:
const a = undefined;
// Optional chaining
if (a?.b?.c?.d?.e) {
console.log(`e: ${e}`);
}
// No optional chaining
if (a && a.b && a.b.c && a.b.c.d && a.b.c.d.e) {
console.log(`e: ${e}`);
}2. Use replacement for undefined variable
In the first approach, we don’t access the property or method when the variable turns out to be undefined. In this solution, we provide a fallback value that we’ll access the property or method on.
For example:
const str = undefined;
const result = (str ?? 'old str').replace('old', 'new');
console.log(result); // 'new str'The null coalescing operator (??) returns the value to its left if it is not null or undefined. If it is, then ?? returns the value to its right.
console.log(5 ?? 10); // 5
console.log(undefined ?? 10); // 10The logical OR (||) operator can also do this:
console.log(5 || 10); // 5
console.log(undefined || 10); // 103. Use fallback value instead of accessing property
Another way to solve the “cannot read property of undefined” error is to avoid the property access altogether when the variable is undefined and use a default fallback value instead.
We can do this by combining the optional chaining operator (?.) and the nullish coalescing operator (??).
For example:
const arr = undefined;
// Using "0" as a fallback value
const arrLength = arr?.length ?? 0;
console.log(arrLength); // 0
const str = undefined;
// Using "0" as a fallback value
const strLength = str?.length ?? 0;
console.log(strLength); // 04. Find out why the variable is undefined
The solutions above are handy when we don’t know beforehand if the variable will be undefined or not. But there are situations where the “cannot read property of undefined” error is caused by a coding error that led to the variable being undefined.
It could be that you forgot to initialize the variable:
let doubles;
const nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
for (const num of nums) {
let double = num * 2;
// ❌ TypeError: cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'push')
doubles.push(double);
}
console.log(doubles);In this example, we call the push() method on the doubles variable without first initializing it.
let doubles;
console.log(doubles); // undefinedBecause an uninitialized variable has a default value of undefined in JavaScript, accessing a property/method causes the error to be thrown.
The obvious fix for the error, in this case, is to assign the variable to a defined value.
// ✅ "doubles" initialized before use
let doubles = [];
let nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
for (const num of nums) {
let double = num * 2;
// push() called - no error thrown
doubles.push(double);
}
console.log(doubles); // [ 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 ]Another common mistake that causes this error is accessing an element from an array variable before accessing an Array property/method instead of accessing the property/method on the actual array variable.
const array = [];
// ❌ TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'push')
array[0].push('html');
array[0].push('css');
array[0].push('javascript');
console.log(array);Accessing the 0 property with bracket indexing gives us the element at the index 0 of the array. The array has no element, so arr[0] evaluates to undefined and calling push() on it causes the error.
To fix this, we need to call the method on the array variable, not one of its elements.
const array = [];
// ✅ Call push() on "array" variable, not "array[0]"
array.push('html');
array.push('css');
array.push('javascript');
console.log(array); // [ 'html', 'css', 'javascript' ]Key takeaways
In JavaScript, the “Cannot read property of undefined” error happens when you try to access a property or method of an undefined variable. To fix it, check that the variable is defined before accessing it using the optional chaining operator (?.). You can also provide a fallback value using the null coalescing operator (??) or avoid accessing the property by using a default value with the nullish coalescing operator (??) and the optional chaining operator (?.). Lastly, try doing your debugging to see why the variable could be undefined.
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Ayibatari Ibaba is a software developer with years of experience building websites and apps. He has written extensively on a wide range of programming topics and has created dozens of apps and open-source libraries.
