gun.path(key)

Path does the same thing as get but has some conveniences built in.

Key

The key property is the name of the field to move to.

// move to the "themes" field on the settings object
gun.get('settings').path('themes')

Once you've changed the context, you can read, write, and path again from that field. While you can just chain one path after another, it becomes verbose, so there are two shorthand styles:

• dot format
• array format

Here's dot notation in action:

// verbose
gun.get('settings').path('themes').path('active')

// shorthand
gun.get('settings').path('themes.active')

And the array format, which really becomes useful when using variables instead of literal strings:

gun.get('settings').path(['themes', themeName])

Unexpected behavior

The dot notation can do some strange things if you're not expecting it. Under the hood, everything is changed into a string, including floating point numbers. If you use a decimal in your path, it will split into two paths...

gun.path(30.5)
// interprets to
gun.path(30).path(5)

This can be especially confusing as the chain might never resolve to a value.

Note: For users upgrading from versions prior to v0.5.x, path used to be necessary - now it is purely a convenience wrapper around get.

Examples

Navigating to a property

/*
  where `user` is {
    name: 'Bob'
  }
*/
gun.get('user').path('name')

Once you've focused on the name property, you can chain other methods like .put or .on to interact with it.

Moving through multiple properties

/*
  where `user` is {
    name: { first: 'bob' }
  }
*/
gun.get('user').path('name').path('first')
// or the shorthand...
gun.get('user').path('name.first')

Chain context

gun.path creates a new context each time it's called, and is always a result of the previous context.

gun.get('API').path('path').path('chain')
/* is different from */
gun.get('API').path('path')
/* and is different from */
gun.get('API')