Best way to handle null values in ReactJS?

It looks like you're trying to access the property items of a variable x.

And if x is undefined, then calling x.items will give you the error you mentioned.

Doing a simple:

if (x) {
  // CODE here
}

or

if (x && x.items) { // ensures both x and x.items are not undefined
  // CODE here
}

EDIT:

You can now use Optional Chaining, which looks sweet:

if (x?.items)

  • In simple function you do it simply by if statement.

if(typeof x !=='undefined' && typeof x.item !=='undefined'){

}

  • in JSX you do it in this way.

render(){
return(
          <div>
          (typeof x !=='undefined' && typeof x.item !=='undefined')?
                <div>success</div>:           
                <div>fail</div>
          </div>
          )
}
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/15.1.0/react.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/15.1.0/react-dom.min.js"></script>


This post talks about a few error handling strategy in your react app.

But in your case, I think using try-catch clause would be the most convenient.

let results;
const resultsFallback = { items: [] };
try {
  // assign results to res
  // res would be an object that you get from API call
  results = res.items;
  // do stuff with items here
  res.items.map(e => {
    // do some stuff with elements in items property
  })
} catch(e) {
  // something wrong when getting results, set
  // results to a fallback object.
  results = resultsFallback;
}

I assume that you are using this only for one particular pesky react component. If you want to handle similar type of error, I suggest you use ReactTryCatchBatchingStrategy in the blog post above.