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JSON Functions Overview

The JSON functions provide a way to extract specific values from JSON documents, particularly from those stored in a column.

There are three types of JSON functions:

  1. These functions extract part of the document, but preserve the original data in the result:
  2. These functions convert a JSON value to a SQL value:
  3. This function extracts a JSON value and converts it to a SQL value, combining the functionalities of the previous two types of functions:

The first two types of functions can be used in conjunction with each other to extract and convert JSON values to SQL values. The following code uses JSON_POINTER_EXTRACT to extract a value from a JSON document and JSON_VALUE to convert it into a SQL value:

SELECT JSON_VALUE(JSON_POINTER_EXTRACT('{"key1":{"key3":"val1" }, "key2":"val2", "key3":5}', '/key1/key3'));

Returns Returns val1 as a SQL TEXT value, rather than the original JSON value "val1" with the double quotes.

Currently, JSON functions support only JSON pointer expressions, which provide a method for accessing specific elements within a JSON document. For convenience, the following aliases are available for JSON functions that use JSON pointer expressions:

  • JSON_POINTER_EXTRACT is an alias for JSON_EXTRACT with the path_syntax parameter set to 'JSONPointer'.
  • JSON_POINTER_EXTRACT_ARRAY is an alias for JSON_EXTRACT_ARRAY with the path_syntax parameter set to 'JSONPointer'.

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JSON pointer expression syntax

The placeholder <json_pointer_expression> indicates where you should use a JSON pointer, which allows access to specific elements in a JSON document. For a formal specification, see RFC6901.

A JSON pointer begins with a forward slash (/), indicating the root of the JSON document, followed by a sequence of property (key) names or zero-based ordinal numbers separated by slashes. Property names identify specific keys, while index numbers specify the Nth element in an array or object.

The tilde (~) and forward slash (/) characters have special meanings and need to be escaped as follows:

  • To specify a literal tilde (~), use ~0.
  • To specify a literal forward slash (/), use ~1.

For example, consider the following JSON document:

{
    "key": 123,
    "key~with~tilde": 2,
    "key/with/slash": 3,
    "value": {
      "dyid": 987,
      "keywords" : ["insanely","fast","analytics"]
    }
}

In the previous JSON document, the JSON pointer expressions evaluate to the following:

PointerResultNotes
/{
"key": 123,
"key~with~tilde": 2,
"key/with/slash": 3,
"value": {
"dyid": 987,
"keywords" : ["insanely","fast","analytics"]
}		Returns the whole document.
/key123
/key~0with~0tilde2Indicates the value associated with the key~with~tilde property name.
/key~1with~1slash3Indicates the value associated with the key/with/slash property name.
/0123Uses an ordinal to indicate the value associated with the key property name. The key property is in the first 0-based position.
/value/keywords/2analyticsIndicates the element “analytics”, which is in the third 0-based position of the array value associated with the keywords property.

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JSON common example

The following JSON document, represented by the <json_common_example> placeholder, is used as a basis for all JSON function examples in this reference.

{
    "key": 123,
    "value": {
      "dyid": 987,
      "uid": "987654",
      "keywords" : ["insanely","fast","analytics"],
      "tagIdToHits": {
        "map": {
          "1737729": 32,
          "1775582": 35
        }
      },
      "events":[
        {
            "EventId": 547,
            "EventProperties" :
            {
                "UserName":"John Doe",
                "Successful": true
            }
        },
        {
            "EventId": 548,
            "EventProperties" :
            {
                "ProductID":"xy123",
                "items": 2
            }
        }
      ]
    }
}