Question

When I run the code below, Safari’s debug console tells me:

TypeError: Result of expression ‘document.getElementById(“txtHint”)’ [null] is not an object.

It seems to be throwing the error at this line:

document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;

Code

 function showItem(str)
{
if (str.length==0)
  {
  document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML="";
  return;
  }
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
  {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
  xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
  }
else
  {// code for IE6, IE5
  xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  }
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function()
  {
  if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200 && xmlhttp.responseText!='')
    {
    document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;
    }
  }
xmlhttp.open("GET","getitem.php?q="+str,true);
xmlhttp.send();
}

I am unsure of why this eror is thrown. There is absolutely a DIV with an ID of “txtHint” and yet safari cannot seem to run this code correctly. I guess my question is, what is wrong with this block of code.

Answer 1

Is this not a duplicate question? Anyway, try throwing the script before the end body tag or invoking the function after dom ready / window load.