How do I detect if a object has a certain property or not?

Question

I am trying to find a cross browser compatible way to find if a object has a certain property or not.

Eg. span

var elem = document.getElementById('span1');

if(elem.hasOwnProperty('title'))
{
}

this works in IE9 but throws nasty errors on IE8 and whole site is brought down just by this line. Is there any browser compatible way to find if object has certain property or not?

To clarify, you are talking specifically about DOM objects? And when you say "property", do you mean "property" or "attribute"? — nnnnnn
– nnnnnn, Commented Jun 22, 2012 at 1:55

Niet the Dark Absol · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-22 01:50:30Z

2

In this case, it's an HTML element so it would have a title attribute.

if(elem.getAttribute("title")) {...}

answered Jun 22, 2012 at 1:50

Niet the Dark Absol

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4 Comments

Niet the Dark Absol Over a year ago

I certainly hope so, given I've used it on every project I've ever made.

Niet the Dark Absol Over a year ago

@antisanity In this case, the only possible falsy value is an empty string, which you probably wouldn't want to do anything with anyway. Although it is something to look out for.

Niet the Dark Absol Over a year ago

"0" is truthy in JavaScript.

Jamie Treworgy Over a year ago

Since OP listed a jQuery tag should probably mention $(..).attr(). While getAttribute is pretty safe there are some cases where it won't work at all, e.g class in ie6.

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