'Argument of type 'HTMLElement | null' is not assignable to parameter of type 'Element'. Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'Element'.ts(2345)

I have index.html

<body>
    <div id="portal"></div>
    <div id="root"></div>
</body>

and want to use the component below in separate portal div than root div,

import React from 'react';

const portalDiv = document.getElementById('portal');

function Portal1(props) {
  return ReactDOM.createPortal(
    <div>
      {props.children}
    <div/>, 
  portalDiv); //here
}

export default Portal1;

But I am getting this error, Argument of type 'HTMLElement | null' is not assignable to parameter of type 'Element'. Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'Element'.ts(2345) in VScode.

I am using Typescript.

Solution 1:^[1]

Other people have answered that you should add a null-check, but Typescript also has a non-null assertion that you can use when you are sure that the value is never null by adding the ! operator to the end of your statement:

const portalDiv = document.getElementById('#your-element')!;

Solution 2:^[2]

So I dont know if anyone is still having this problem but there's an easier and straightforward solution to this. simply declare the modal element with "as" keyword
const modalRoot = document.getElementById("modal-root") as HTMLElement; This removes the error. I suggest looking through this great react-typescript cheatsheet.
https://github.com/typescript-cheatsheets/react

Solution 3:^[3]

Since getElementById possibly returns null. So you just simply check before using like:

function Portal1({ children }) {
  return portalDiv ? ReactDOM.createPortal(<>{children}</>, portalDiv) : null;
}

Solution 4:^[4]

When we select an HTMLElement inside a DOM Tree using getElementById it returns the Element within the document that matches the specified selector, if no match is found it basically returns null.

Let's get the portal element:

let portalDiv = document.getElementById("portal");

If the portal exists in the DOM tree it will return the HTMLElemnt in case of not found it returns null.

So the return type of getElementById is HTMLElement | null, since the 2nd argument of the ReactDom.createPrortal(children: ReactNode, element: HTMLElement, id: string) is strictly HTMLElement we have to caste our portalDiv to HTMLElement inorder to get rid of the warning.

Since we are sure that the portalDiv do exists we can use this method to deal with the null conditions.

let portalDiv = getElementById("portal") as HTMLElement;

now we can use portalDiv without getting any errors:

function Portal1(props) {
  return ReactDOM.createPortal(
    <div>
      {props.children}
    <div/>, 
  portalDiv);
}

Solution 5:^[5]

getElementById can return null, but createPortal doesn't accept null.

If you know the portal div will exist, make the code explicit about that:

const portalDiv = document.getElementById('portal');
if (!portalDiv) {
    throw new Error("The element #portal wasn't found");
}

That will allow TypeScript to narrow the type of the constant, removing the | null part of the type. It also gives you a nice proactive warning if someone changes things such that the div isn't there when this code runs anymore.

Solution 6:^[6]

I think the best solution to this is not to make it either null or HTMLDIVElement but rather in the use-case try to let typescript know that the DivElement might be empty at the moment, but you will take responsibility of it by just using "!" symbol.

Code sample below:

import React, {useEffect} from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import './modal-portlet.style.scss';

const modalRoot = document.getElementById('modalRoot');

type Props = {
  children: JSX.Element;
};
const ModalPortlet: React.FC<Props> = ({children}): JSX.Element => {
  const divContainer = window.document.createElement('div');
  divContainer.setAttribute('class', 'modal-container');

  useEffect(() => {
    /**********
     * immediately the component mount append @divContainer as the childNode of @modalRoot in the DOM
     **********/
    modalRoot!.appendChild(divContainer);

    return () => {
      modalRoot!.removeChild(divContainer);
    };
  });

  /************
   * return the createPortal api that takes the children(JSX) and inject it into @divContainer which is already a childNode of @modalRoot
   ************/
  return <>{ReactDOM.createPortal(children, divContainer)}</>;
};

export default ModalPortlet;

Solution 7:^[7]

I was also facing same error so I tried few different ways but the one that worked for me is handling null condition i.e. const portalDiv = document.getElementById('portal')!;

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1	Titulum
Solution 2	Oluwaseyitan Baderinwa
Solution 3	tmhao2005
Solution 4	Biswarup Bouri
Solution 5	T.J. Crowder
Solution 6	Emmanuel Onah
Solution 7	Priyanshu Jain

'Argument of type 'HTMLElement | null' is not assignable to parameter of type 'Element'. Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'Element'.ts(2345)

Solution 1:[1]

Solution 2:[2]

Solution 3:[3]

Solution 4:[4]

Solution 5:[5]

Solution 6:[6]

Solution 7:[7]