I'm having trouble with a replace method in JavaScript. The application crashes when a value is null. What is the best way around this issue?

datafield.putValue(value.replace("~","&"));

update

all that was need was a simple if statement wrapped around.

if(value != null)
{
    datafield.putValue(value.replace("~","&"));
}

I'm having trouble with a replace method in JavaScript. The application crashes when a value is null. What is the best way around this issue?

datafield.putValue(value.replace("~","&"));

update

all that was need was a simple if statement wrapped around.

if(value != null)
{
    datafield.putValue(value.replace("~","&"));
}

• javascript
• replace
• null

Share Improve this question Follow edited Jun 9, 2017 at 12:12 Bish25 asked Jun 9, 2016 at 11:54 Bish25Bish25 61611 gold badge1111 silver badges3737 bronze badges 11

• 1 use ternary operator – Siva Kumar Commented Jun 9, 2016 at 11:55
• 2 Are you sure that's Java? Doesn't look like Java. Replace is capitalized and it has a JavaScript-style literal regular expression. The former suggests it's C#; the latter suggests it's JavaScript. – T.J. Crowder Commented Jun 9, 2016 at 11:58
• 1 This is still not valid Java ... – Tom Commented Jun 9, 2016 at 12:00
• 1 Still has the JavaScript-style regular expression. – T.J. Crowder Commented Jun 9, 2016 at 12:00
• 1 @tak3shi: No, that would try to replace the literal string /~/g with &. Sam, I've fixed the question with valid Java code to do a replace of ~ with &, globally in the string. You could also use .replace('~', '&')` (the char-based one instead of the CharSequence-based one) since both the search text and the replacement are exactly one character long. – T.J. Crowder Commented Jun 9, 2016 at 12:22

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 4

You could use if, certainly, either to not put anything or to put null:

if (Value != null) {
    datafield.putValue(Value.replace("~","&"));
}

or

if (Value != null) {
    datafield.putValue(Value.replace("~","&"));
} else {
    datafield.putValue(null);
}

...but if you want to do that last one I'd use the conditional operator:

datafield.putValue(Value == null ? null : Value.replace("~","&"));

...or is replace clever enough to not check when null...

if Value is null, replace will never get called (in Java). So it's impossible for replace to be "clever" enough to handle it.

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Side note: Since both the search text and the replacement are exactly one character long, you could use the char-based version of replace instead of the CharSequence-based one: Value.replace('~', '&')