{"id":7189,"date":"2025-09-16T17:23:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T22:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/?p=7189"},"modified":"2025-09-16T17:23:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T22:23:14","slug":"javascripts-operator-default-values-made-simple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/javascripts-operator-default-values-made-simple\/","title":{"rendered":"JavaScript&#8217;s ??= Operator: Default Values Made Simple"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.trevorlasn.com\/blog\/javascript-nullish-coalescing-assignment-operator\">Nice reminder<\/a> about JavaScript evolving to be more useful from Trevor I. Lasn:<\/p>\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\" aria-describedby=\"shcb-language-1\" data-shcb-language-name=\"JavaScript\" data-shcb-language-slug=\"javascript\"><span><code class=\"hljs language-javascript\"><span class=\"hljs-comment\">\/\/ Old way (pre-2021)<\/span>\n<span class=\"hljs-keyword\">if<\/span> (user.name === <span class=\"hljs-literal\">null<\/span> || user.name === <span class=\"hljs-literal\">undefined<\/span>) {\n  user.name = <span class=\"hljs-string\">'Anonymous'<\/span>;\n}\n\n<span class=\"hljs-comment\">\/\/ Or using the nullish coalescing operator (??)<\/span>\nuser.name = user.name ?? <span class=\"hljs-string\">'Anonymous'<\/span>;\n\n<span class=\"hljs-comment\">\/\/ New way (ES2021 and later)<\/span>\nuser.name ??= <span class=\"hljs-string\">'Anonymous'<\/span>;<\/code><\/span><small class=\"shcb-language\" id=\"shcb-language-1\"><span class=\"shcb-language__label\">Code language:<\/span> <span class=\"shcb-language__name\">JavaScript<\/span> <span class=\"shcb-language__paren\">(<\/span><span class=\"shcb-language__slug\">javascript<\/span><span class=\"shcb-language__paren\">)<\/span><\/small><\/pre>\n\n\n<p>The final line there uses what is called the &#8220;The nullish coalescing assignment operator assignment operator&#8221; in case you need to impress people at parties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nice reminder about JavaScript evolving to be more useful from Trevor I. Lasn: The final line there uses what is called the &#8220;The nullish coalescing assignment operator assignment operator&#8221; in case you need to impress people at parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sig_custom_text":"","sig_image_type":"featured-image","sig_custom_image":0,"sig_is_disabled":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[3,398],"class_list":["post-7189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-beat","tag-javascript","tag-nullish-coalescing"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/pexels-photo-4672717.jpeg?fit=1880%2C1253&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7192,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7189\/revisions\/7192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frontendmasters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}