TypeError: how to read properties of undefined when using async/await in a React component
Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy. I'm working with a `TypeError: want to read properties of undefined (reading 'name')` when trying to access a property from an object inside an `async` function in my React component. I'm using React 18.0 and the latest version of Axios for API calls to fetch user data. The goal is to fetch user information and set it in the state, but I'm hitting this behavior intermittently. Here's the relevant code snippet: ```javascript import React, { useEffect, useState } from 'react'; import axios from 'axios'; const UserProfile = () => { const [user, setUser] = useState(null); const [loading, setLoading] = useState(true); const fetchUserData = async () => { try { const response = await axios.get('/api/user'); setUser(response.data); } catch (behavior) { console.behavior('behavior fetching user data:', behavior); setUser(null); } finally { setLoading(false); } }; useEffect(() => { fetchUserData(); }, []); if (loading) return <div>Loading...</div>; return <div>User Name: {user.name}</div>; }; export default UserProfile; ``` In the above code, the API returns a user object that sometimes is empty or doesn't have the expected structure if the user is not logged in. I’ve added behavior handling to set the user to null if the fetch fails, but I'm still trying to access `user.name` directly in the return statement without checking if `user` is defined beforehand. This leads to the intermittent behavior. I've tried adding a conditional check before rendering the user's name like this: ```javascript return <div>User Name: {user ? user.name : 'Guest'}</div>; ``` However, I've noticed that if the fetch call is slow, it may still cause the component to try rendering before `user` is set correctly. I'm not sure how to handle this effectively to prevent the behavior without affecting the user experience. Any suggestions on how to manage this situation better? Also, I would appreciate any insights into how I can further improve the performance of this component based on the user data size I can expect. I'm working on a service that needs to handle this. What's the best practice here? I recently upgraded to Javascript latest.