You can use null
to explicitly indicate that an object property does not contain a value. Typically, if a property is set up to contain a value, but the value is not available for some reason, the value null
should be used to indicate that the reference property has an empty value.
Sample: sample60.html
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><body><script> // The property foo is waiting for a value, so we set its initial value to null. var myObjectObject = { foo: null }; console.log(myObjectObject.foo); // Logs 'null'. </script></body></html>
Don't confuse null
with undefined
. undefined
is used by JavaScript to tell you that something is missing. null
is provided so you can determine when a value is expected but not available yet.
typeof
returns null
values as "object"
For a variable that has a value of null
, the typeof
operator returns "object. If you need to verify a null
value, the ideal solution would be to see if the value you are after is equal to null
. In the following sample, we use the ===
operator to specifically verify that we are dealing with a null
value.
Sample: sample61.html
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><body><script> var myObject = null; console.log(typeof myObject); // Logs 'object', not exactly helpful. console.log(myObject === null); // Logs true, only for a real null value. </script></body></html>
Conclusion
When verifying a null
value, always use ===
because ==
does not distinguish between null and undefined.
Comments