The project that I am working is document-oriented, meaning that the schema cannot be well controlled. We end up with a lot of code is very guarded code that l

The project that I am working is document-oriented, meaning that the schema cannot be well controlled. We end up with a lot of code is very guarded code that looks something like this: if(((json.author || {}).lastPublish || {}).publishDate)) { do something } It can be replaced with: if(jsonPath(json, "$.author.lastPublish .publishDate")) { do something } Or better, get all book publish dates, regardless of number of books, if any even exist, and those that might have a missing publishDate: publishDates = jsonPath(json,"$.author.books[*].publishDate");