Cannot read property 'addEventListener' of null

I have to use vanilla JavaScript for a project. I have a few functions, one of which is a button that opens a menu. It works on pages where the target id exists, but causes an error on pages where the id doesn't exist. On those pages where the function cannot find the id, I receive a "Cannot read property 'addEventListener' of null " error and none of my other functions work.

Below is the code for the button that opens the menu.

function swapper() {
toggleClass(document.getElementById('overlay'), 'open');
}

var el = document.getElementById('overlayBtn');
el.addEventListener('click', swapper, false);

var text = document.getElementById('overlayBtn');
text.onclick = function(){
this.innerHTML = (this.innerHTML === "Menu") ? "Close" : "Menu";
return false;
};

How do I deal with this? I probably need to all wrap this code in another function or use an if/else statement so that it only searches for the id on specific pages, but not sure exactly.

Solution 1:

I think the easiest approach would be to just check that el is not null before adding an event listener:

var el = document.getElementById('overlayBtn');
if(el){
  el.addEventListener('click', swapper, false);
}

Solution 2:

It seems that document.getElementById('overlayBtn'); is returning null because it executes before the DOM fully loads.

If you put this line of code under

window.onload=function(){
  -- put your code here
}

then it will run without issue.

Example:

window.onload=function(){
    var mb = document.getElementById("b");
    mb.addEventListener("click", handler);
    mb.addEventListener("click", handler2);
}


function handler() {
    $("p").html("<br>" + $("p").text() + "<br>You clicked me-1!<br>");
}

function handler2() {
    $("p").html("<br>" + $("p").text() + "<br>You clicked me-2!<br>");
}

Solution 3:

I faced a similar situation. This is probably because the script is executed before the page loads. By placing the script at the bottom of the page, I circumvented the problem.