Question 296631 in Javascript Question posted in
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Javascript – why the testvar ??= "default"; still yield testvar is not defined?

I have something in my html:

<script>
testvar = "mytest";
</script>
<script src="index.js" type="module"/>

Since some html might not declare the testvar at all.
I try to make my script more robust by adding following in index.js:

testvar ??= "default";

However, this does not seem to work, it still raise testvar is not defined in latest chrome.

if I do:

let testvar;
testvar ??= "default";

It does not have error, but of course, the global testvar is not take into account this time. It will always be default.

I wonder, what is the correct way to do this, or there is no way to do things like this?

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    You can’t use ??= to declare a global variable – you can only use it to set existing variables that are set to undefined.

    You can instead do globalThis.testvar ??= "default", which will work because you’re setting a property rather than declaring a globally scoped variable.

    This approach will still allow you to later access it as simply testvar.

    globalThis.testvar ??= "default"

console.log(testvar)

    See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/globalThis

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  2. 0

    Top-level variables that are created in javascript (running in a browser) become properties of the window object.

    That means you can access it everywhere with window.testvar.

    You can also assign it with the ??= operator.

    Demo:

    // Here we can't use only `testvar` yet, it must be prefixed:
console.log(window.testvar ?? "-- HAS NO VALUE --");

window.testvar ??= "default";

// Now we can use it without the prefix:
console.log(testvar);
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