SCRIPT438: Object doesn't support property or method IE

Question

I have an option in my application where users can deactivate their profiles. Only admin can activate them again.

I have a class ActivateProfile with two methods

• userExist(userName) that checks if user with that userName exists and his/her profile is deactivated
• and activateAccountByUser(userName) that activate the profile of the user again

I call a JavaScript function on the click event of an input type button. This code works fine on Chrome and Mozilla, but on Internet Explorer I get this error:

SCRIPT438: Object doesn't support property or method userExist

function activateProf() {        
   var userName=document.getElementById("userName").value;

   if (userName == "") {
      alert("Полето е задолжително");
   } else {
      alert(userName + "1");
      ActivateProfile.userExist(userName, { callback:function(exist) {
         if (userName) {
            ActivateProfile.activateAccountByUser(userName);
            alert("User is activated");
         } else {
            alert("User does not exist");
         }
      }});
   }
}

Here is the code for Activate profile class

 public void activateAccountByUser(String userName) {
    try {
        Connection c = DBComm.getInstance().getConnection();
        Statement s = c.createStatement();
        ResultSet set = s.executeQuery("select * from accounts where userName = '" + userName + "' and isauthorized='2'");

        if (set.next()) {
            Statement st = c.createStatement();
            st.executeUpdate("update accounts set isauthorized='1' where userName='" + userName                    + "' and isauthorized='2'");
        }
        s.close();
        c.close();
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger(ActivateProfile.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
    }
}

public boolean userExist(String userName) throws SQLException {
    //true exist
    //false does not exist
    boolean existEmbg = false;

    try {
        Connection c = DBComm.getInstance().getConnection();
        Statement s = c.createStatement();
        ResultSet set = s.executeQuery("select * from accounts where userName = '" + userName + "' and isauthorized='2'");

        if (set.next()) {
            existEmbg = true;
        } else {
            existEmbg = false;
        }
        s.close();
        c.close();
    } catch (Exception ex) {
       java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger(ActivateProfile.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
    }
    return existEmbg;
}

Answer 1

After some days searching the Internet I found that this error usually occurs when an html element id has the same id as some variable in the javascript function. After changing the name of one of them my code was working fine.

Answer 2

This is a common problem in web applications which employ JavaScript namespacing. When this is the case, the problem 99.9% of the time is IE's inability to bind methods within the current namespace to the "this" keyword.

For example, if I have the JS namespace "StackOverflow" with the method "isAwesome". Normally, if you are within the "StackOverflow" namespace you can invoke the "isAwesome" method with the following syntax:

this.isAwesome();

Chrome, Firefox and Opera will happily accept this syntax. IE on the other hand, will not. Thus, the safest bet when using JS namespacing is to always prefix with the actual namespace. A la:

StackOverflow.isAwesome();

Answer 3

I have added var for all the variables in the corrosponding javascript. That solved the problem in IE.

Previous Code

billableStatus = 1 ;
var classStr = $(this).attr("id").split("_");  
date = currentWeekDates[classStr[2]]; // Required    

activityNameId = "initialRows_" + classStr[1] + "_projectActivityName";
activityId = $("#"+activityNameId).val();        

var projectNameId = "initialRows_" + classStr[1] + "_projectName" ;
projectName = $("#"+projectNameId).val();        

var timeshitEntryId = "initialRows_"+classStr[1]+"_"+classStr[2];     
timeshitEntry = $("#"+timeshitEntryId).val();   

New Code

var billableStatus = 1 ;
var classStr = $(this).attr("id").split("_");  
var date = currentWeekDates[classStr[2]]; // Required    

var activityNameId = "initialRows_" + classStr[1] + "_projectActivityName";
var activityId = $("#"+activityNameId).val();        

var projectNameId = "initialRows_" + classStr[1] + "_projectName" ;
var projectName = $("#"+projectNameId).val();        

var timeshitEntryId = "initialRows_"+classStr[1]+"_"+classStr[2];     
var timeshitEntry = $("#"+timeshitEntryId).val();   

Answer 4

My problem was having type="application/javascript" on the <script> tag for jQuery. IE8 does not like this! If your webpage is HTML5 you don't even need to declare the type, otherwise go with type="text/javascript" instead.