Reach Into An Object For Nested Data With Get

Among the many lodash utilities is _.get for getting data from nested objects. You can specify where to reach into the nested data of an object using a path.

Consider the following awkwardly nested object:

const resp = {
  error: {
    errors: [
      { message: "Something went wrong" },
    ],
  },
};

Here is how we might reach into this with vanilla JavaScript:

resp.error.errors[0].message;

Reaching into this for the message value is tricky because as soon as the resp object contains differently nested data, an error is likely to be thrown. We can simultaneously avoid a bunch of exception handling logic and provide a default value with the _.get function:

_.get(resp, 'error.errors[0].message', 'Default error message');

If we decide to not include a default value, then undefined will be used.