Summary of Changes

After merging of #46621, Cypress System Tests fail more often (but not always) with
(uncaught exception)TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'clearChoices').

However, investigations have shown that this also happened before, but not as often. It appears that Cypress speeds up page loading and XHR timing, and with the newly added onChange(), this causes Cypress to fail with an uncaught exception.

This simple hack prevents the crash. If you have a better implemention, you are very welcome to share it.

Testing Instructions

• Run overall Cypress System Tests (given via CI).
• Run the sometimes failing System Test at least three times:

  npx cypress run --spec tests/System/integration/administrator/components/com_menu/MenuItem.cy.js
  

• Check menu items still work in backend

Actual result BEFORE applying this Pull Request

Cypress System Tests fail sometimes with
(uncaught exception)TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'clearChoices')

Note, 15 January 2026: With the root cause fix #46681 merged, it would be hard to see the problem before this PR. Easiest is to revert the root cause fix PR eg. with:

git revert 6cdc072
npm run build:js

Expected result AFTER applying this Pull Request

Cypress System Tests passed

Link to documentations

Please select:

• Documentation link for docs.joomla.org:

• No documentation changes for docs.joomla.org needed

• Pull Request link for manual.joomla.org:

• No documentation changes for manual.joomla.org needed