Angular2: Cannot read property 'name' of undefined

Question

The variable selectedHero is null in the template so you cannot bind selectedHero.name as is. You need to use the elvis operator ?. for this case:

<input [ngModel]="selectedHero?.name" (ngModelChange)="selectedHero.name = $event" />

The separation of the [(ngModel)] into [ngModel] and (ngModelChange) is also needed because you can't assign to an expression that uses the elvis operator.

I also think you mean to use:

<h2>{{selectedHero?.name}} details!</h2>

instead of:

<h2>{{hero.name}} details!</h2>

You just needed to read a little further and you would have been introduced to the *ngIf structural directive.

selectedHero.name doesn't exist yet because the user has yet to select a hero so it returns undefined.

<div *ngIf="selectedHero">
  <h2>{{selectedHero.name}} details!</h2>
  <div><label>id: </label>{{selectedHero.id}}</div>
  <div>
    <label>name: </label>
    <input [(ngModel)]="selectedHero.name" placeholder="name"/>
  </div>
</div>

The *ngIf directive keeps selectedHero off the DOM until it is selected and therefore becomes truthy.

This document helped me understand structural directives.

In order to avoid this, you could as well initialize the selectedHero member of your component to an empty object (instead of leaving it undefined).

In your example code, that would give something like this :

export class AppComponent {
  title = 'Tour of Heroes';
  heroes = HEROES;
  selectedHero:Hero = new Hero();

  onSelect(hero: Hero):void{
      this.selectedHero = hero;
  }
}

You were getting this error because you followed the poorly-written directions on the Heroes tutorial. I ran into the same thing.

Specifically, under the heading Display hero names in a template, it states:

To display the hero names in an unordered list, insert the following chunk of HTML below the title and above the hero details.

followed by this code block:

<h2>My Heroes</h2>
<ul class="heroes">
  <li>
    <!-- each hero goes here -->
  </li>
</ul>

It does not instruct you to replace the previous detail code, and it should. This is why we are left with:

<h2>{{hero.name}} details!</h2>

outside of our *ngFor.

However, if you scroll further down the page, you will encounter the following:

The template for displaying heroes should look like this:

<h2>My Heroes</h2>
<ul class="heroes">
  <li *ngFor="let hero of heroes">
    <span class="badge">{{hero.id}}</span> {{hero.name}}
  </li>
</ul>

Note the absence of the detail elements from previous efforts.

An error like this by the author can result in quite a wild goose-chase. Hopefully, this post helps others avoid that.

This line

<h2>{{hero.name}} details!</h2>

is outside *ngFor and there is no hero therefore hero.name fails.

This worked for me:

export class Hero{
   id: number;
   name: string;

   public Hero(i: number, n: string){
     this.id = 0;
     this.name = '';
   }
 }

and make sure you initialize as well selectedHero

selectedHero: Hero = new Hero();