Parsing Nested JSON Objects with Mixed Data Types in Node.js - TypeError on Deep Access
I've been researching this but I can't seem to get I'm integrating two systems and I've been working on this all day and I'm currently working on parsing a complex nested JSON object in a Node.js application, and I'm running into a TypeError when trying to access specific fields... My JSON structure is quite intricate, where some properties are arrays containing objects with different data types. Here's a simplified version of the JSON I'm trying to work with: ```json { "users": [ { "id": 1, "name": "Alice", "preferences": { "colors": [ "red", "blue" ], "settings": { "notifications": true, "theme": "dark" } } }, { "id": 2, "name": "Bob", "preferences": null } ] } ``` I'm trying to retrieve the color preferences for each user, and my current implementation looks like this: ```javascript const jsonData = /* JSON data as above */; jsonData.users.forEach(user => { const colorPreferences = user.preferences.colors; console.log(colorPreferences); }); ``` However, when I run this code, I encounter the behavior: `TypeError: want to read properties of null (reading 'colors')`. I understand that the second user has `preferences` set to `null`, but I thought using optional chaining would handle this gracefully. I've tried modifying my code as follows: ```javascript const jsonData = /* JSON data as above */; jsonData.users.forEach(user => { const colorPreferences = user.preferences?.colors || []; console.log(colorPreferences); }); ``` Yet, I'm still getting the same behavior. Am I missing something about how optional chaining works in this context? How can I safely access these nested properties without running into a `TypeError`? Any insights or best practices for handling such cases would be greatly appreciated! This is all running on Node.js v16.13.0. This is part of a larger desktop app I'm building. Any examples would be super helpful. This issue appeared after updating to Javascript 3.10. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. For context: I'm using Javascript on CentOS. I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks for any help you can provide!