Today new version of JSON UDF functions: 0.3.2 was released. This is development release which contains new functionality. You can download functions from the MySQL Labs website.

What is new?

New function `JSON_COUNT` added. This function returns number of children of the key path specified. If no key path specified, number of children of the root element is returned. Bug #70580/17584692 ADD FUNCTION `JSON_COUNT` TO COUNT SIZE OF JSON DOCUMENT

mysql> select json_count('{"MySQL Central": ["conference", 2014]}') as 'root count',
    ­> json_count('{"MySQL Central": ["conference", 2014]}', 'MySQL Central') as 'first element count'\G     
                                                   
************************ 1. row ************************
         root count: 1
first element count: 2
1 row in set …

August 15, 2014 By Severalnines

We're looking for an energetic and talented web developer to join our small but agile web team. This position is full-time and pay is negotiable. The hours are flexible and work can be done remotely.

Severalnines is a self-funded startup with a dozen employees; headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and with a globally distributed, home-office based team. We provide automation and management software for database clusters. Our ClusterControl product is the leading management application for database clusters and is used by thousands of companies.

We were founded in 2010 and launched our product that same year, so you’ll be …

I got an interesting question about EXPLAIN and the range access method recently. The person had a query that could be written either with a BETWEEN predicate or an IN predicate, something similar to this:

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * 
    -> FROM orders WHERE customer_id BETWEEN 7 AND 10 AND value > 500;
+----+-------------+--------+-------+----------+----------+------+------
| id | select_type | table  | type  | key      | key_len  | rows | Extra
+----+-------------+--------+-------+----------+----------+------+------
|  1 | SIMPLE      | orders | range | cust_val | 10       |   91 |  ...
+----+-------------+--------+-------+----------+----------+------+------

mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT * 
    -> FROM orders WHERE customer_id IN (7,8,9,10) AND value > 500;
+----+-------------+--------+-------+----------+----------+------+------
| id | select_type | table  | type  | key      | key_len  | rows …

Today new version of JSON UDF functions: 0.3.1 was released. This is development release which contains new functionality. You can download functions from the MySQL Labs website.

What is new?

Default value for compile option `WITH_PCRE` now is `bundled` independently from the
platform (Bug #71265/18081332 Library name mismatch for PCRE on Ubuntu)

New values, passed to functions `JSON_APPEND`, `JSON_REPLACE`, `JSON_SET` as numbers, empty strings or `NULL`s are converted to JSON objects. Objects, passed as strings are not converted: you are still responsible to put quotes around string values. Also these functions check if element which needs to be inserted is valid JSON value. (Bug #70394/17491708 MySQL JSON UDFs: …

When I presented JSON UDF functions at MySQL Connect last year attendees asked me to implement few features. I quickly wrote their wishes in my notepad. I also created feature requests at bugs.mysql.com  when I was home.

During following months I fixed bugs in the functions and implemented feature requests, including those which I got from MySQL Connect. I started from most important and affecting users, such as wrong results bugs of features for which I got more than one request.

But today all such requests finished and I am working on bug #70580  This feature request says: "Add function JSON_COUNT which will go through the JSON document and count number of childs of the root element." Well, I wrote it myself, but I don't exactly remember if the user wanted to know depth of the JSON …

New version of JSON UDF functions 0.2.2 have been just released. It is last maintenance release of 0.2 series. However it contains two new features:

JSON_VALID now accepts array as a root element of the JSON document (Bug#70567/17583282)

JSON functions can now be installed and uninstalled using a script (Bug#71263/18022788 Easy installation sql script).

This feature is Community contribution. Thank you, Daniel van Eeden!

This release also contains following bug fixes:

71050/17882710 json_extract returning same column twice if key names are not fully distinct. (Fixed for JSON_EXTRACT, JSON_CONTAINS_KEY, JSON_APPEND, JSON_REMOVE, JSON_REPLACE, JSON_SET) …

As author of MySQL JSON functions I am also interested in how development goes in another parties. JSON functions and operators in PostgreSQL, indeed, have great features. Some of them, such as operators, I can not do using UDF functions only. But lets see how these functions are interchangeable.

Note: all PostgreSQL examples were taken from PostgreSQL documentation.
First topic is syntax sugar.

Today new version of JSON UDF functions: 0.3.0 was released. This is major release which contains new functionality. You can download functions from the MySQL Labs website.

What was added?

Functions JSON_EXTRACT, JSON_CONTAINS_KEY, JSON_APPEND, JSON_REMOVE, JSON_REPLACE, JSON_SET now accept both string and integer arguments as array indexes. (Bug #70393/17491709)

Now syntax JSON_EXTRACT(doc, 'key', 1); is accepted.

New function JSON_SAFE_MERGE checks JSON documents for validity before merging them. In addition JSON_MERGE now merges valid documents, having array as root element. (Bug #70575/17583568)

JSON_VALID now accepts array as a root element of the JSON document (Bug #70567/17583282)

Also this release contains following bug fixes:

71050/17882710 …

Currently, if you want to search a key using JSON UDFs you have to specify each its part as a separate argument to the function: JSON_CONTAINS_KEY(doc, 'root', 'child', 'child of child', 'child of child of child', etc.....). This way of working with parameters is easy for developer, less error-prone, but can be not very beautiful.

I was suggested by some of users to change it to '/parent/child/child-of-child/...' or to 'parent:child:child-of-child:...' There are, probably, can be other suggestions. What do you like the best? How do you feel about current style with separate argument for each key element? Should we change or extend this syntax?

Two weeks ago I announced new maintenance release of JSON UDFs: 0.2.1. It not only contains bug fixes, how you can expect from a maintenance release, but also contains improvements in build and test scripts.

First improvement is the easier way to build JSON UDFs on Windows. In the first version building on Windows was a pane: you had to build PCRE library, copy four files to directories where Visual Studio can find them and only then build JSON functions themselves. Now you can build this way too, but only if you really wish.

By default cmake will create appropriate makefiles for bundled PCRE sources and for JSON functions. Only command you need to prepare sources is:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\CMake 2.8\bin\cmake.exe" -G "Visual Studio 11 Win64" . -DMYSQL_DIR="/path/to/mysql/installation"   

And then you can build functions:

devenv my_json_udf.sln …