Checking if a variable exists in javascript

Solution 1:

A variable is declared if accessing the variable name will not produce a ReferenceError. The expression typeof variableName !== 'undefined' will be false in only one of two cases:

• the variable is not declared (i.e., there is no var variableName in scope), or
• the variable is declared and its value is undefined (i.e., the variable's value is not defined)

Otherwise, the comparison evaluates to true.

If you really want to test if a variable is declared or not, you'll need to catch any ReferenceError produced by attempts to reference it:

var barIsDeclared = true; 
try{ bar; }
catch(e) {
    if(e.name == "ReferenceError") {
        barIsDeclared = false;
    }
}

If you merely want to test if a declared variable's value is neither undefined nor null, you can simply test for it:

if (variableName !== undefined && variableName !== null) { ... }

Or equivalently, with a non-strict equality check against null:

if (variableName != null) { ... }

Both your second example and your right-hand expression in the && operation tests if the value is "falsey", i.e., if it coerces to false in a boolean context. Such values include null, false, 0, and the empty string, not all of which you may want to discard.

Solution 2:

It is important to note that 'undefined' is a perfectly valid value for a variable to hold. If you want to check if the variable exists at all,

if (window.variableName)

is a more complete check, since it is verifying that the variable has actually been defined. However, this is only useful if the variable is guaranteed to be an object! In addition, as others have pointed out, this could also return false if the value of variableName is false, 0, '', or null.

That said, that is usually not enough for our everyday purposes, since we often don't want to have an undefined value. As such, you should first check to see that the variable is defined, and then assert that it is not undefined using the typeof operator which, as Adam has pointed out, will not return undefined unless the variable truly is undefined.

if ( variableName  && typeof variableName !== 'undefined' )

Solution 3:

If you want to check if a variable (say v) has been defined and is not null:

if (typeof v !== 'undefined' && v !== null) {
    // Do some operation  
}

If you want to check for all falsy values such as: undefined, null, '', 0, false:

if (v) {
   // Do some operation
}

Solution 4:

I'm writing an answer only because I do not have enough reputations to comment the accepted answer from apsillers. I agree with his answer, but

If you really want to test if a variable is undeclared, you'll need to catch the ReferenceError ...

is not the only way. One can do just:

this.hasOwnProperty("bar")

to check if there is a variable bar declared in the current context. (I'm not sure, but calling the hasOwnProperty could also be more fast/effective than raising an exception) This works only for the current context (not for the whole current scope).