Cannot read property 'length' of null (javascript)

This also works - evaluate, if capital is defined. If not, this means, that capital is undefined or null (or other value, that evaluates to false in js)

if (capital && capital.length < 1) {do your stuff}

The proper test is:

if (capital != null && capital.length < 1) {

This ensures that capital is always non null, when you perform the length check.

Also, as the comments suggest, capital is null because you never initialize it.