Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'id')

We’ll often run into errors like “Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘id’)”. It’s one of the most common errors that developers encounter during web development. Let’s dig in and understand this error, what it means, and how we can debug it.

Breaking down the Message

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'id')

In older browsers, this might also be shown as:

Cannot read property 'id' of undefined

TypeError is a subset of JavaScript Error that is thrown when code attempts to do something that does not exist on the target object. In this case, our code expects to have an object with a id property, but that object was not present. id is commonly used on HTMLElement, but it could be a custom data object from a remote API as well.

This is a blocking error, and script execution will stop when this error occurs.

Understanding the Root Cause

This error can be thrown for a lot of reasons, as it is not uncommon to look for the id property of an element, or when iterating over a collection of data. For example, let’s say we’re looking for an element in the DOM and reading it’s id.

For example, if we had a function that acts on a string argument, but is called without a string, we would see this error.

var myElement = document.querySelector('#my-element');
console.log(myElement.id);

But if the query #my-element doesn’t exist in the document, we’ll get null back, which obviously doesn’t have an id property.

Alternatively, you might be making a network request that you expect to return a JSON object with an id property.

fetch('/my/api')
  .then(resp => resp.json())
  .then(json => console.log(json.id));

If the API returns an error object, or something else you don’t expect, json may not be defined or not have the expected shape. Or, worse, if the API has a operational failure it can return an HTML error page instead of JSON, leading to errors like SyntaxError: Unexpected Token <.

How to Fix It

So how do we fix this and prevent it from happening again?

1. Understand why your object is undefined

First and foremost, you need to understand why this happened before you can fix it. You are probably not doing exactly the same thing we are, so the reason your object is undefined may be somewhat different. Consider:

• Are you relying on a network response to be a certain shape?
• Are you processing user-input?
• Is an external function or library calling into your code?

Or maybe its just a logical bug somewhere in your code.

2. Add Defensive Checking

Anytime you don’t completely control the input into your code, you need to be defensively checking that arguments have the correct shape. API response change, functions get updated, and users do terrible, terrible things.

For instance, if you have a fetch request that receives a JSON response with a foo string property, you might have a defensive check that looks like this:

fetch("https://example.com/api")
  .then(resp => {
    return resp.json();
  })
  .then(json => {
    if (!json || !json.id) {
      // Record an error, the payload is not the expected shape.
    }
  });

3. Monitor Your Environment

You’ll need to make sure that the issue is really fixed and that the problem stops happening. Mistakes happen, APIs change, and users are unpredictable. Just because your application works today, doesn’t mean an error won’t be discovered tomorrow. Tracking when exceptional events happen to your users gives you the context to understand and fix bugs faster. Check out TrackJS Error Monitoring for the fastest and easiest way to get started.