Nullish Coalescing operator in JavaScript
For now you have to do this like:
(this.state.updateItem || {}).unit || 'Unit'
There is a stage one proposal to ES (JavaScript) for optional chaining whereby we'll (eventually, hopefully) be able do do something like this:
this.state.updateItem?.unit || 'Unit'
And if you're doing babel you can use it now!:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/babel-plugin-transform-optional-chaining
Edit: The proposal is now in stage 4 (as of January 2020) and will be added into the JavaScript standard
You can try with setting empty object as default value:
(this.state.updateItem || {}).unit || 'Unit'
unit will always either have value or be undefined.
Here's a way using es6 destructuring and defaults:
const {
updateItem: {
unit = 'Unit'
} = {}
} = this.state;
then you can just use unit