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 refere 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.