Skip to content

Checking exports !== undefined can give false positives #238

Description

@fofr

Consider the following:

  • Content with a heading "Exports"
  • A publishing tool that dynamically creates IDs based on the value of that heading, id="exports"
  • A browser takes this heading and creates a global variable, window.exports returns the HTML element
  • The line typeof exports !== 'undefined' ? exports : Hogan now returns an HTML element and Hogan doesn't start properly
var Hogan = {};

(function(Hogan) {
  // The value of Hogan at this point is the HTML element
  // <h2 id="exports">Exports</h2>
})(typeof exports !== 'undefined' ? exports : Hogan);

This is what happened on GOV.UK on articles with content that refers to "Exports". This was one of the affected pages: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notice-143-a-guide-for-international-post-users/notice-143-a-guide-for-international-post-users#exports

Here's the hot fix that was applied:
alphagov/shared_mustache#8

Activity

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

No labels
No labels

Type

No type

Projects

No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions