getting data from a pointcloud2 coming from Kinect

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I am working on getting depth data from Kinect. as i understand, the point cloud topic from Kinect (/camera/depth/points2) directly provides depth data in meters in the form of a pointcloud2 (please correct me if I am wrong!)

however, after browsing through pointcloud2 documentation, I did not find any method to, say, access the value of a specific point in the point cloud. then I read somewhere that pointcloud2 is abstracted in such a way that data cannot be accessed directly from it. (is that true?)

could anyone help me out with getting data from the pointcloud2 topic that I am subscribing to? thanks!