How to check if Object and its properties exist?

Question

I receive an object from an API call. I want to check:

1. If the object exists
2. Whether the object's property has the property I'm looking for or not

Let's say that I'm expecting the following object of objects:

success.response.data.users.items.list

Now I want to know if this list object exists or not.

I have tried:

• typeof success.response.data.users.items.list !== "undefined"

  Error I got: TypeError: Cannot read property 'data' of undefined

• success.hasOwnProperty("response.data.users.items.list")

  This always evaluates to false because hasOwnProperty cannot check multi-level objects apparently.

• success.response.data.users.items.hasOwnProperty("list")

  Error I got: TypeError: Cannot read property 'data' of undefined

Is there any modern and quick way of checking this?

Answer 1

If it's an option for you, optional chaining is the way to go:

success?.response?.data?.users?.items?.list || {} 

if not, you just have to check that each object exists before attempting to access a child property, or use ES6 destructuring with defaults (pretty gnarly with deeply-nested objects though):

const { response: { data: { users: { items: { list = {} } = {} } = {} } = {} } = {} } = success || {}

Answer 2

If optional chaining is not an option, you could use something within those lines:

success && success.response && success.response.data && 
success.response.data.users && success.response.data.users.items && success.response.data.users.items.list