[Javascript] Safer property access with Lodash's 'get' method

Posted 2020-08-12

Property access in javascript can be problematic - especially when dealing with nested Objects and Arrays. Doing it manually and in a safe manner requires tons of boilerplate inside conditionals and results in a defensive style of coding. In this lesson we look at why this is a problem & how to overcome it using the get method from the popular utility library Lodash

 

var data = {
  "response": {
    "body": {
      "deviceDetail": {
        "deviceDetails": [
          {
            "handsetIMEI": 7356383,
            "handsetDateLastUsed": "2019-04-20T01:02:03.812Z",
          },
          {
            "handsetIMEI": 34534,
            "handsetDateLastUsed": "2019-04-20T01:02:03.812Z",
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }}

const ns = [‘response‘, ‘body‘, ‘deviceDetail‘, ‘deviceDetails‘];
const handsetIMEI = _.get(data, ns.concat([0, ‘handsetIMEI‘]))
console.log(handsetIMEI)