Property 'click' does not exist on type 'Element' in TS

Property 'click' does not exist on type 'Element' in TS #

The error "Property 'click' does not exist on type 'Element'" occurs when we try to call the click() method on an element that has a type of Element. To solve the error, use a type assertion to type the element as HTMLElement before calling the method.

property click not exist type element

This is the index.html file for the examples in this article.

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <button id="btn">Submit</button>

    <script src="./src/index.ts"></script>
  </body>
</html>

And here is an example of how the error occurs in the index.ts file.

src/index.ts

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// 👇️ const btn: Element | null
const btn = document.querySelector('#btn');

btn?.addEventListener('click', () => {
  console.log('button clicked');
});

if (btn != null) {
  // ⛔️ Property 'click' does not exist on type 'Element'.ts(2339)
  btn.click();
}

The reason we got the error is that the return type of the document.querySelector method is Element | null and the click method doesn't exist on the Element type.

To solve the error, use a type assertion to type the element as an HTMLElement.

src/index.ts

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const btn = document.querySelector('#btn') as HTMLElement | null;

btn?.addEventListener('click', () => {
  console.log('button clicked');
});

if (btn != null) {
  btn.click();
}

If you used the document.getElementsByClassName method, type the collection as HTMLCollectionOf<HTMLElement>.

src/index.ts

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// 👇️ with getElementsByClassName
// type as HTMLCollectionOf<HTMLElement>
const btns = document.getElementsByClassName(
  'btn',
) as HTMLCollectionOf<HTMLElement>;

for (let i = 0; i < btns.length; i++) {
  btns[i].click();
}

We used the HTMLElement type in the example above, however we could have also used the HTMLButtonElement type to be more specific.

Type assertions are used when we have information about the type of a value that TypeScript can't know about.

We effectively tell TypeScript that the btn variable stores anHTMLElement or a null value and not to worry about it.

We used a union type to specify that the variable could still be null, because if an HTML element with the provided selector does not exist in the DOM, the querySelector() method returns a null value.

We used a simple if statement that serves as a type guard to make sure the btn variable doesn't store a null value before calling its click() method.

src/index.ts

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const btn = document.querySelector('#btn') as HTMLElement | null;

btn?.addEventListener('click', () => {
  console.log('button clicked');
});

// 👉️ btn has type HTMLElement or null here

if (btn != null) {
  // 👉️ btn has type HTMLElement here
  btn.click();
}

TypeScript knows that the btn variable has a type of HTMLElement in the if block and allows us to directly call its click() method.

It's always a best practice to include null in the type assertion because the querySelector method would return null if no element with the provided selector was found.

You might also use the optional chaining (?.) operator to short-circuit if the reference is equal to null or undefined

src/index.ts

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const btn = document.querySelector('#btn') as HTMLElement | null;

// 👇️ using optional chaining (?.)
btn?.addEventListener('click', () => {
  console.log('button clicked');
});

// 👇️ using optional chaining (?.)
btn?.click();

The optional chaining operator short-circuits returning undefined if the reference is equal to null or undefined.

In other words, if the btn variable stores a null value, we won't attempt to call the click() method on null and get a runtime error.

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Property 'click' does not exist on type 'Element' in TS

Property 'click' does not exist on type 'Element' in TS #

Conclusion #

Borislav Hadzhiev