Disallow undefined property access in JavaScript
npm install definitelyundefined property bugs close to the source.
$ npm install --save-dev definitely
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JavaScript allows you to access nonexistent properties on an object and simply evaluates the expression to undefined. Usually when this happens it's a bug, but since no error is thrown such bugs can be a difficult to debug as the problem tends to rear its ugly head far from whence it came. For example,`javascript
const obj = {
foo: 'bar'
}someFunction(obj.bar)
`obj has no property bar, so we're passing undefined to someFunction, which may pass it to another function, put it onto a queue, etc. It could be much later and in a completely different area of the code when someone tries to do something they shouldn't with that undefined value, at which point we'll begin the laborious process of trying to figure out where things went awry.That's where
definitely comes in:`javascript
import definitely from 'definitely'const definiteObj = definitely({
foo: 'bar'
})
someFunction(definiteObj.bar) // throws "Error: attempted to access nonexistent property
bar"
`Now you've caught the bug right at the source!
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The magic that enables this library is an ES2015 feature called
Proxy, which allows intercepting arbitrary property access attempts and deciding what to do with them (in our case we throw an exception if the underlying object is missing the requisite property). Proxy is not yet supported in all browsers (e.g. IE and Safari) and in Node prior to version 6 requires a special flag (--harmony-proxies) and shim. If Proxy is not found in the global scope, this library becomes a no-op.$3
definitely-loader`, a Webpack loader which verifies that imported names exist within the target module.