Provide a simple and consistent means to interact programatically with entity data, form submissions and other Drupal data across projects and major versions.
// Create a getter for node entities
$n = data_api('node');
// Load a node entity
$node = node_load(4503);
// Use the getter to pull the first name or default.
// Do not include the language key; language is determined automatically.
$vars['name'] = $n->get($node, 'field_first_name.0.value', '{first name}');