A dotpath is a notation to reference elements of a JSON object. It includes the ability to traverse nested arrays. The root of a is a leading dot. A dot is typed as a period (i.e. "."). Given the following the dot path to the "name" field would be ".name".
{"name":"Jane Doe"}The dotpath .name would return the value "Jane
Doe".
Arrays are designated with square brackets (e.g. [0] would reference the first element of an array, arrays are number from zero).
["one", "two", "three"]The dotpath of [0] would correspond to the value "one",
[1] would correspond to the value "two" and
[2] would refer to the value "three". If you wish to
include all the elements of an array you would use [:].
This would return the full array. Likewise if you need the second until
end of the array you would get the values with [2:].
Finally if you only wanted the first and second element you could refer
to it with the dotpath [0:1].
Often you have more complex objects including some level of nesting. Element(s) can be reference by combine the dotpaths into more complex expressions.
{
"title": "Introducing dataset",
"authors":[
{"given_name":"Tom", "family_name":"Morrell"},
{"given_name":"Robert","family_name": "Doiel"}
]
}You would reference the title with .title, the first
author's family name with .authors[0].family_name or get an
array of authors family names with
.authors[:].fmaily_name.