Say you have a large object, picture it coming from typical json/api, and you have something like ..

tell( bigObj.payload.docs[i][name].length ) // prints 19,307

of course, the docs array may not exist (perhaps it was missing in the data from the endpoint)

So superficially to avoid a crash you

  if (bigObj.payload.docs === undefined) {
      log .. docs array missing !!
  }
  else {
    tell( bigObj.payload.docs[i][name].length ) // prints 2,704
  }
      

However that’s actually wrong. You have to go through them one at a time …

  if (bigObj.payload === undefined || bigObj.payload.docs === undefined) {
      log .. docs array missing !!
  }

It’s a total pain if you’re 3 or 4 deep!

In short, node experts,

is there any way, or indeed a better way? TY