Fix TypeError when receiving messages without action property

[ErkoRisthein]

Summary

Fixes TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'startsWith') that occurs when the window receives postMessage events that have a data property but no action property.

Root Cause

The condition event.data?.action.startsWith("web-eid:") safely handles when event.data is undefined, but throws when event.data exists and event.data.action is undefined.

Fix

Add optional chaining on action:

if (!event.data?.action?.startsWith("web-eid:")) return;

Test Plan

• Added unit tests for messages with missing action property
• npm test passes (48 tests)

Signed-off-by: Erko Risthein erko@risthein.ee

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR fixes a TypeError that occurs when the window receives postMessage events with a data property but without an action property. The fix adds optional chaining to safely access the action property before calling startsWith().

Key Changes:

• Added optional chaining operator to prevent TypeError when event.data.action is undefined
• Added unit tests to verify messages without the action property are properly ignored

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
src/services/WebExtensionService.ts	Added optional chaining to event.data.action to prevent TypeError when action is undefined
src/services/tests/WebExtensionService-test.ts	Added three test cases verifying that messages with missing/null/undefined data or action properties are properly ignored

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

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[taneltm]

Thanks for noticing the issue!

Made this mistake when I changed:

    if (!/^web-eid:/.test(event.data?.action)) return;

to

    if (!event.data?.action.startsWith("web-eid:")) return;

Your change does fix the issue, but only if we expect event.data.action to always be a string.
If a website or extension had action as an object, it would still cause an error.
For example:

window.postMessage(
    {
        action: {
            id: "<actionId>",
            _t: "<actionTimestamp>",
        },
        payload: {
            ...
        }
    },
    "*"
);

We could add another optional chaining check, so ...action?.startsWith?.("web-eid:"), but if we don't check the action type nor startsWith type, we could still end up with an error - Uncaught TypeError: event.data.action.startsWith is not a function.
For example, if someone uses the startsWith as a property name.

window.postMessage(
    {
        action: {
            startsWith: "2022-10-12",
            endsWith: "2026-10-12
        }
    },
    "*"
);

Adding type checks would make this IF statement harder to read at a glance, so I think the best option would be to revert it back to:

    if (!/^web-eid:/.test(event.data?.action)) return;

The regex .test(...) accepts any data type, but only matches strings.

What do you think, @ErkoRisthein ?

[ErkoRisthein]

Thanks for the review, @taneltm. You're right that the optional chaining approach doesn't handle all edge cases.

I tried reverting to the regex approach you suggested:

if (!/^web-eid:/.test(event.data?.action)) return;

However, I discovered a non-intuitive edge case: JavaScript's RegExp.test() coerces its argument to a string before matching. This means an array like ["web-eid:test"] gets coerced to "web-eid:test" and passes the regex check. The code then fails later at message.action.endsWith() since arrays don't have that method.

So I've added an explicit type guard before calling startsWith:

if (typeof event.data?.action !== "string") return;
if (!event.data.action.startsWith("web-eid:")) return;

This handles all edge cases:

• Objects like { id: "123" } are rejected by type check
• Objects with startsWith property like { startsWith: "2022-10-12" } are rejected by type check
• Arrays like ["web-eid:test"] are rejected by type check
• Numbers, null, undefined are all rejected by type check

I've added test cases for these scenarios. All tests pass.

[taneltm]

• Original issue reproduced in main
• PR fixes the issue
• Confirmed that the tests are working properly (tests fail, as expected, when the fix is reverted)

[mrts]

@ErkoRisthein, heartfelt thanks for your contribution!

A couple of formalities still remain, then I will gladly merge this: can you please squash the commits into one, sign the Certificate of Origin with git commit --amend --sign-off and do a force push? Thanks in advance!