Optional Chaining in JavaScript

This is currently a Stage 4 proposal you can check on the progress of it here:
https://github.com/tc39/proposal-optional-chaining

You can use the babel plugin today:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/babel-plugin-transform-optional-chaining

Update 11th January 2020: Babel now supports optional chaining by default https://babeljs.io/blog/2020/01/11/7.8.0

The Optional Chaining operator is spelled ?.. It may appear in three positions:

obj?.prop       // optional static property access
obj?.[expr]     // optional dynamic property access
func?.(...args) // optional function or method call

Notes:

In order to allow foo?.3:0 to be parsed as foo ? .3 : 0 (as required for backward compatibility), a simple lookahead is added at the level of the lexical grammar, so that the sequence of characters ?. is not interpreted as a single token in that situation (the ?. token must not be immediately followed by a decimal digit).

Also worth checking out:

https://github.com/tc39/proposal-nullish-coalescing

https://github.com/babel/babel/tree/master/packages/babel-plugin-proposal-nullish-coalescing-operator

Optional chaining has landed in JS. We can use optional chaining via the ?. operator in object property access. It allows us to try accessing properties of objects which might not exists (i.e. are undefined) without throwing an error.

Here is a code example:

const obj = {
  foo: {
    bar: 1
  }
};

// If we try to access property which doesn't exists
// it just returns undefined
console.log(obj.baz);

try {
  // Now we try to access a property of undefined which throws an error
  obj.baz.foz;
} catch (e) {
  console.dir(e.message);
}

// Now we use the optional chaining operator ?.
// We get undefined instead of an error
console.log(obj.baz?.foz);
            
console.log(obj.foo?.bar);

In plain JavaScript you have to do type checks or structure your code so that you know an object will exist.

CoffeeScript, a language that compiles down to JavaScript, provides an existential operator ?. for safe chaining if you're willing to consider a preprocessed language.

There's another discussion here about why you can't reproduce this behavior in JS.

There is also a discussion on the ESDiscuss forums about adding an existential operator to a future version of JavaScript. It doesn't seem very far along though, certainly nowhere close to practical use. More of an idea at this point.