Steps when setting up GPIO

Question

I'm trying to get my head around the steps involved in doing something as simple as accessing a GPIO pin. 
 I'm running VSCode as my IDE, with the nRF Connect extension (V1.7.0). I've been playing around with the blinky example contained in ..\v1.7.0\zephyr\samples, and I'm using the nRF52-DK with the nRF52832 chipset. 
 What I need is someone to just step me through the process of how to set up my code so I can access the relevant GPIO on my hardware, and then change its state. The blinky example does this, and I can play around with that and add some additional GPIO pins, etc, but I'm not fully understanding all the stuff involving nodes and devices and flags, etc, etc. I want to get that clear in my head before I try and go too much further. 
 As I understand it: 
 1. In the Devicetree, a GPIO pin will be defined along the lines: 
 
 gpio_pin_name: pin_name { 
 gpios = <&gpio0 PIN_NUMBER GPIO_ACTIVE_LOW>; 
 label = "GPIO PIN"; 
 }; 
 
 In this example, pin_name is the sub-node name in Devicetree, but that's not something I can reference in my code - correct? If I wanted to reference this pin, I'd need to be using the sub-node label, in this case " gpio_pin_name - correct? 
 
 2. Next step is to create an alias to the gpio_pin_name instance. Not sure if this is strictly necessary, but I guess is good practise as it looks like it ensures my code is then easily compatible with different hardware. So, in my example, I might do something like: 
 
 #define PIN_1_NODE DT_ALIAS(gpio_pin_name)

#if DT_NODE_HAS_STATUS(PIN_1_NODE DT_ALIAS, okay) 
 #define PIN_1 DT_GPIO_LABEL(PIN_1_NODE, gpios) 
 #define PIN_1_PIN DT_GPIO_PIN(PIN_1_NODE, gpios) 
 #define PIN_1_FLAGS DT_GPIO_FLAGS(PIN_1_NODE, gpios)

So, now PIN_1_NODE is set up to reference all the node info in the Devicetree for gpio_pin_name (I think!) 
 
 Could I skip this step, and instead just use gpio_pin_name in place of PIN_1_NODE whenever I need to access the Devicetree info? I guess this would mean if I try and interface to a board that doesn't use " gpio_pin_name ", then I have to go through my code and change all those references, rather than just change the #define statement above, correct? 
 
 3. In my code, the next step I need to complete is creating a device, of type " struct device " that will store all the information from the Devicetree for the GPIO pin I am interested in using. 
 
 So, I could do: 
 
 struct device *gpio_pin_1; 
 
 The pointer gpio_pin_1 then needs to be associated with the Devicetree entry for gpio_pin_name. If I understand things correctly, that is done using the device_get_binding API, viz: 
 
 gpio_pin_1 = device_get_binding(gpio_pin_name); 
 
 or 
 
 gpio_pin_1 = device_get_binding(PIN_1_NODE); 
 
 Correct? 
 
 4. OK, assuming I'm still on the right path, I can now start manipulating the GPIO pin using the various gpio_ API's. e.g. 
 
 gpio_pin_configure(gpio_pin_1, PIN_1_PIN, GPIO_OUTPUT_ACTIVE | PIN_1_FLAGS); 
 gpio_pin_set(gpio_pin_1, PIN_1_PIN, 0); 
 
 I know this probably all seems second nature to most of you, but as a beginner is this development environment, that is used to a completely different approach, I'm wanting to get all this clear in my head now, so I don't get caught out later. 
 
 If I've missed any critical steps above, or added some that aren't strictly needed, I'd appreciate your comments. 
 
 Cheers, 
 Mike