12 June 2007

The joys of JavaScript error messages

Today I meant to type

someObject.someProperty
but instead I typed
someObject..someProperty
with the incorrect extra period.

Firefox kicked back the amazingly helpful

XML descendants internal method called on incompatible Object
which I stared at dumbfounded. All of Firebug's glorious power was seemingly useless against this error. It didn't help that I was working atop a custom Dojo build.

Then I flipped back to my editor which thankfully still had the cursor next to the extra period. A simple backspace and I was moving again...

19 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 8, 2007 at 8:28:00 PM UTC

    thanks, man.I had the same error and you saved me a couple of minutes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 5, 2007 at 3:08:00 PM UTC

    Same here! Damn typo's! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousDecember 6, 2008 at 12:24:00 AM UTC

    Thanks... this error looked a bit scary at first glance... but as I suspected, it was all bark and no bite. Thanks for the quick synopsis on what was causing it! :D

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mike DesjardinsFebruary 6, 2009 at 10:04:00 PM UTC

    THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Same double-period, I'm glad you posted this!

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousFebruary 19, 2009 at 6:47:00 PM UTC

    Same here.. Thanks a ton!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousMay 7, 2009 at 8:50:00 PM UTC

    Thanks a bunch. Your post saved a lot of time.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ShaneJuly 28, 2009 at 10:18:00 PM UTC

    Saved me some time too. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Tony BarnesDecember 10, 2009 at 4:40:00 PM UTC

    God damn, saved me crying after finally cobbling together my first javascript page...

    A thousand thankyous!!

    ReplyDelete
  9. UnknownMarch 20, 2010 at 8:10:00 AM UTC

    Cheres just saved me hours trying to find out what that meant!

    ReplyDelete
  10. VishuMay 28, 2010 at 12:59:00 PM UTC

    Thanks :-)

    i've written username..val() while validating!!

    have beer! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousJune 15, 2010 at 4:11:00 PM UTC

    Great tip. Saved me loads of time I'm sure!

    ReplyDelete
  12. AnonymousAugust 12, 2010 at 3:37:00 AM UTC

    Thanks a zillion. Indeed Firebug did all the work for me.

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  13. Oscar BravoAugust 12, 2010 at 8:36:00 AM UTC

    One more thanks for pin-pointing the error!

    However, a cautionary note if you encounter a double-period in your code; it may not simply be a extra period, it could be a missing element in the object definition. For example, "this..id" may really have been "this.wibble.id". So it might not just be a case of removing one of the periods.

    I know, I was that marine...

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  14. AnonymousSeptember 1, 2010 at 6:27:00 PM UTC

    OH MAN AWESOME THANK YOU

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  15. Manish RanjanJanuary 20, 2011 at 10:47:00 AM UTC

    Thanks a lot mate :)

    ReplyDelete
  16. AnonymousMay 5, 2011 at 5:27:00 PM UTC

    You just saved me. Facepalm! Thanks for posting!

    ReplyDelete
  17. AnonymousJune 23, 2011 at 10:13:00 PM UTC

    oh man thank u soo much

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  18. AnonymousJune 27, 2011 at 11:44:00 AM UTC

    WOW i dont believe it LOL it was that :) thanks a lot

    ReplyDelete
  19. AnonymousOctober 21, 2011 at 3:30:00 PM UTC

    I just spended 1 hour of my life in this! Double f***ing periods

    ReplyDelete