document.documentElement could be null actually

[JounQin]

Bug Report

🔎 Search Terms

document.documentElement

🕗 Version & Regression Information

• This is a crash
• This changed between versions ______ and _______
• This is the behavior in every version I tried, and I reviewed the FAQ for entries about _________
• I was unable to test this on prior versions because _______

⏯ Playground Link

Playground link with relevant code

💻 Code

document.documentElement // `HTMLElement | null` expected

document.documentElement.remove() // `document.documentElement` is `null` now

🙁 Actual behavior

🙂 Expected behavior

readonly documentElement: HTMLElement | null

[MartinJohns]

Related: #29052 (comment)

I'd say over 99 % of the cases it's never null, so changing this would be a real nuisance for close to no benefit.

[JounQin]

I don't think they are same, document.documentElement! is very easy to handle the impossible null value.

[RyanCavanaugh]

I don't think this is a condition we need to make all programs concern themselves with. If you remove the element, please put it back before someone else notices it's gone 😅

[JounQin]

If you remove the element, please put it back before someone else notices it's gone 😅

I'm working on a DOM sanitizer at https://github.com/un-ts/domiso/blob/main/src/index.ts#L68, and it could be a parsererror on parsing svg, so the incorrect element is removed as intended, I don't think I should add document.documentElement back?

[typescript-bot]

This issue has been marked 'Working as Intended' and has seen no recent activity. It has been automatically closed for house-keeping purposes.