Exploring data flow with path queries

Prerequisites

Before you can effectively use path queries, you should understand the basics of data flow analysis. See About data flow analysis in the CodeQL documentation.

Running path queries in VS Code locally

1. Open a path query in VS Code. A path query is a CodeQL query with the property @kind path-problem.
2. Right-click in the window with the query open, then select CodeQL: Run Query on Selected Database. Alternatively, you can also run this from the VS Code Command Palette.
3. Once the query has finished running, you can see the results in the "Results" view (under alerts in the dropdown menu). Each query result describes the flow of information between a source and a sink.
4. Expand the result to see the individual steps that the data follows.
5. Click each step to jump to it in the source code and investigate the problem further.

Next steps

To start writing your own path queries, see Creating path queries in the CodeQL documentation.