JSON JSONB JSON data types are for storing JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data, as specified in RFC 7159. Such data can also be stored as text, but the JSON data types have the advantage of enforcing that each stored value is valid according to the JSON rules. There are also assorted JSON-specific functions and operators available for data stored in these data types; see . PostgreSQL offers two types for storing JSON data: json and jsonb. To implement efficient query mechanisms for these data types, PostgreSQL also provides the jsonpath data type described in . The json and jsonb data types accept almost identical sets of values as input. The major practical difference is one of efficiency. The json data type stores an exact copy of the input text, which processing functions must reparse on each execution; while jsonb data is stored in a decomposed binary format that makes it slightly slower to input due to added conversion overhead, but significantly faster to process, since no reparsing is needed. jsonb also supports indexing, which can be a significant advantage. Because the json type stores an exact copy of the input text, it will preserve semantically-insignificant white space between tokens, as well as the order of keys within JSON objects. Also, if a JSON object within the value contains the same key more than once, all the key/value pairs are kept. (The processing functions consider the last value as the operative one.) By contrast, jsonb does not preserve white space, does not preserve the order of object keys, and does not keep duplicate object keys. If duplicate keys are specified in the input, only the last value is kept. In general, most applications should prefer to store JSON data as jsonb, unless there are quite specialized needs, such as legacy assumptions about ordering of object keys. RFC 7159 specifies that JSON strings should be encoded in UTF8. It is therefore not possible for the JSON types to conform rigidly to the JSON specification unless the database encoding is UTF8. Attempts to directly include characters that cannot be represented in the database encoding will fail; conversely, characters that can be represented in the database encoding but not in UTF8 will be allowed. RFC 7159 permits JSON strings to contain Unicode escape sequences denoted by \uXXXX. In the input function for the json type, Unicode escapes are allowed regardless of the database encoding, and are checked only for syntactic correctness (that is, that four hex digits follow \u). However, the input function for jsonb is stricter: it disallows Unicode escapes for characters that cannot be represented in the database encoding. The jsonb type also rejects \u0000 (because that cannot be represented in PostgreSQL's text type), and it insists that any use of Unicode surrogate pairs to designate characters outside the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane be correct. Valid Unicode escapes are converted to the equivalent single character for storage; this includes folding surrogate pairs into a single character. Many of the JSON processing functions described in will convert Unicode escapes to regular characters, and will therefore throw the same types of errors just described even if their input is of type json not jsonb. The fact that the json input function does not make these checks may be considered a historical artifact, although it does allow for simple storage (without processing) of JSON Unicode escapes in a database encoding that does not support the represented characters. When converting textual JSON input into jsonb, the primitive types described by RFC 7159 are effectively mapped onto native PostgreSQL types, as shown in . Therefore, there are some minor additional constraints on what constitutes valid jsonb data that do not apply to the json type, nor to JSON in the abstract, corresponding to limits on what can be represented by the underlying data type. Notably, jsonb will reject numbers that are outside the range of the PostgreSQL numeric data type, while json will not. Such implementation-defined restrictions are permitted by RFC 7159. However, in practice such problems are far more likely to occur in other implementations, as it is common to represent JSON's number primitive type as IEEE 754 double precision floating point (which RFC 7159 explicitly anticipates and allows for). When using JSON as an interchange format with such systems, the danger of losing numeric precision compared to data originally stored by PostgreSQL should be considered. Conversely, as noted in the table there are some minor restrictions on the input format of JSON primitive types that do not apply to the corresponding PostgreSQL types. JSON primitive type PostgreSQL type Notes string text \u0000 is disallowed, as are Unicode escapes representing characters not available in the database encoding number numeric NaN and infinity values are disallowed boolean boolean Only lowercase true and false spellings are accepted null (none) SQL NULL is a different concept The input/output syntax for the JSON data types is as specified in RFC 7159. The following are all valid json (or jsonb) expressions: -- Simple scalar/primitive value -- Primitive values can be numbers, quoted strings, true, false, or null SELECT '5'::json; -- Array of zero or more elements (elements need not be of same type) SELECT '[1, 2, "foo", null]'::json; -- Object containing pairs of keys and values -- Note that object keys must always be quoted strings SELECT '{"bar": "baz", "balance": 7.77, "active": false}'::json; -- Arrays and objects can be nested arbitrarily SELECT '{"foo": [true, "bar"], "tags": {"a": 1, "b": null}}'::json; As previously stated, when a JSON value is input and then printed without any additional processing, json outputs the same text that was input, while jsonb does not preserve semantically-insignificant details such as whitespace. For example, note the differences here: SELECT '{"bar": "baz", "balance": 7.77, "active":false}'::json; json ------------------------------------------------- {"bar": "baz", "balance": 7.77, "active":false} (1 row) SELECT '{"bar": "baz", "balance": 7.77, "active":false}'::jsonb; jsonb -------------------------------------------------- {"bar": "baz", "active": false, "balance": 7.77} (1 row) One semantically-insignificant detail worth noting is that in jsonb, numbers will be printed according to the behavior of the underlying numeric type. In practice this means that numbers entered with E notation will be printed without it, for example: SELECT '{"reading": 1.230e-5}'::json, '{"reading": 1.230e-5}'::jsonb; json | jsonb -----------------------+------------------------- {"reading": 1.230e-5} | {"reading": 0.00001230} (1 row) However, jsonb will preserve trailing fractional zeroes, as seen in this example, even though those are semantically insignificant for purposes such as equality checks. For the list of built-in functions and operators available for constructing and processing JSON values, see . Representing data as JSON can be considerably more flexible than the traditional relational data model, which is compelling in environments where requirements are fluid. It is quite possible for both approaches to co-exist and complement each other within the same application. However, even for applications where maximal flexibility is desired, it is still recommended that JSON documents have a somewhat fixed structure. The structure is typically unenforced (though enforcing some business rules declaratively is possible), but having a predictable structure makes it easier to write queries that usefully summarize a set of documents (datums) in a table. JSON data is subject to the same concurrency-control considerations as any other data type when stored in a table. Although storing large documents is practicable, keep in mind that any update acquires a row-level lock on the whole row. Consider limiting JSON documents to a manageable size in order to decrease lock contention among updating transactions. Ideally, JSON documents should each represent an atomic datum that business rules dictate cannot reasonably be further subdivided into smaller datums that could be modified independently. jsonb containment jsonb existence Testing containment is an important capability of jsonb. There is no parallel set of facilities for the json type. Containment tests whether one jsonb document has contained within it another one. These examples return true except as noted: -- Simple scalar/primitive values contain only the identical value: SELECT '"foo"'::jsonb @> '"foo"'::jsonb; -- The array on the right side is contained within the one on the left: SELECT '[1, 2, 3]'::jsonb @> '[1, 3]'::jsonb; -- Order of array elements is not significant, so this is also true: SELECT '[1, 2, 3]'::jsonb @> '[3, 1]'::jsonb; -- Duplicate array elements don't matter either: SELECT '[1, 2, 3]'::jsonb @> '[1, 2, 2]'::jsonb; -- The object with a single pair on the right side is contained -- within the object on the left side: SELECT '{"product": "PostgreSQL", "version": 9.4, "jsonb": true}'::jsonb @> '{"version": 9.4}'::jsonb; -- The array on the right side is not considered contained within the -- array on the left, even though a similar array is nested within it: SELECT '[1, 2, [1, 3]]'::jsonb @> '[1, 3]'::jsonb; -- yields false -- But with a layer of nesting, it is contained: SELECT '[1, 2, [1, 3]]'::jsonb @> '[[1, 3]]'::jsonb; -- Similarly, containment is not reported here: SELECT '{"foo": {"bar": "baz"}}'::jsonb @> '{"bar": "baz"}'::jsonb; -- yields false -- A top-level key and an empty object is contained: SELECT '{"foo": {"bar": "baz"}}'::jsonb @> '{"foo": {}}'::jsonb; The general principle is that the contained object must match the containing object as to structure and data contents, possibly after discarding some non-matching array elements or object key/value pairs from the containing object. But remember that the order of array elements is not significant when doing a containment match, and duplicate array elements are effectively considered only once. As a special exception to the general principle that the structures must match, an array may contain a primitive value: -- This array contains the primitive string value: SELECT '["foo", "bar"]'::jsonb @> '"bar"'::jsonb; -- This exception is not reciprocal -- non-containment is reported here: SELECT '"bar"'::jsonb @> '["bar"]'::jsonb; -- yields false jsonb also has an existence operator, which is a variation on the theme of containment: it tests whether a string (given as a text value) appears as an object key or array element at the top level of the jsonb value. These examples return true except as noted: -- String exists as array element: SELECT '["foo", "bar", "baz"]'::jsonb ? 'bar'; -- String exists as object key: SELECT '{"foo": "bar"}'::jsonb ? 'foo'; -- Object values are not considered: SELECT '{"foo": "bar"}'::jsonb ? 'bar'; -- yields false -- As with containment, existence must match at the top level: SELECT '{"foo": {"bar": "baz"}}'::jsonb ? 'bar'; -- yields false -- A string is considered to exist if it matches a primitive JSON string: SELECT '"foo"'::jsonb ? 'foo'; JSON objects are better suited than arrays for testing containment or existence when there are many keys or elements involved, because unlike arrays they are internally optimized for searching, and do not need to be searched linearly. Because JSON containment is nested, an appropriate query can skip explicit selection of sub-objects. As an example, suppose that we have a doc column containing objects at the top level, with most objects containing tags fields that contain arrays of sub-objects. This query finds entries in which sub-objects containing both "term":"paris" and "term":"food" appear, while ignoring any such keys outside the tags array: SELECT doc->'site_name' FROM websites WHERE doc @> '{"tags":[{"term":"paris"}, {"term":"food"}]}'; One could accomplish the same thing with, say, SELECT doc->'site_name' FROM websites WHERE doc->'tags' @> '[{"term":"paris"}, {"term":"food"}]'; but that approach is less flexible, and often less efficient as well. On the other hand, the JSON existence operator is not nested: it will only look for the specified key or array element at top level of the JSON value. The various containment and existence operators, along with all other JSON operators and functions are documented in . jsonb indexes on GIN indexes can be used to efficiently search for keys or key/value pairs occurring within a large number of jsonb documents (datums). Two GIN operator classes are provided, offering different performance and flexibility trade-offs. The default GIN operator class for jsonb supports queries with the key-exists operators ?, ?| and ?&, the containment operator @>, and the jsonpath match operators @? and @@. (For details of the semantics that these operators implement, see .) An example of creating an index with this operator class is: CREATE INDEX idxgin ON api USING GIN (jdoc); The non-default GIN operator class jsonb_path_ops does not support the key-exists operators, but it does support @>, @? and @@. An example of creating an index with this operator class is: CREATE INDEX idxginp ON api USING GIN (jdoc jsonb_path_ops); Consider the example of a table that stores JSON documents retrieved from a third-party web service, with a documented schema definition. A typical document is: { "guid": "9c36adc1-7fb5-4d5b-83b4-90356a46061a", "name": "Angela Barton", "is_active": true, "company": "Magnafone", "address": "178 Howard Place, Gulf, Washington, 702", "registered": "2009-11-07T08:53:22 +08:00", "latitude": 19.793713, "longitude": 86.513373, "tags": [ "enim", "aliquip", "qui" ] } We store these documents in a table named api, in a jsonb column named jdoc. If a GIN index is created on this column, queries like the following can make use of the index: -- Find documents in which the key "company" has value "Magnafone" SELECT jdoc->'guid', jdoc->'name' FROM api WHERE jdoc @> '{"company": "Magnafone"}'; However, the index could not be used for queries like the following, because though the operator ? is indexable, it is not applied directly to the indexed column jdoc: -- Find documents in which the key "tags" contains key or array element "qui" SELECT jdoc->'guid', jdoc->'name' FROM api WHERE jdoc -> 'tags' ? 'qui'; Still, with appropriate use of expression indexes, the above query can use an index. If querying for particular items within the "tags" key is common, defining an index like this may be worthwhile: CREATE INDEX idxgintags ON api USING GIN ((jdoc -> 'tags')); Now, the WHERE clause jdoc -> 'tags' ? 'qui' will be recognized as an application of the indexable operator ? to the indexed expression jdoc -> 'tags'. (More information on expression indexes can be found in .) Another approach to querying is to exploit containment, for example: -- Find documents in which the key "tags" contains array element "qui" SELECT jdoc->'guid', jdoc->'name' FROM api WHERE jdoc @> '{"tags": ["qui"]}'; A simple GIN index on the jdoc column can support this query. But note that such an index will store copies of every key and value in the jdoc column, whereas the expression index of the previous example stores only data found under the tags key. While the simple-index approach is far more flexible (since it supports queries about any key), targeted expression indexes are likely to be smaller and faster to search than a simple index. GIN indexes also support the @? and @@ operators, which perform jsonpath matching. Examples are SELECT jdoc->'guid', jdoc->'name' FROM api WHERE jdoc @? '$.tags[*] ? (@ == "qui")'; SELECT jdoc->'guid', jdoc->'name' FROM api WHERE jdoc @@ '$.tags[*] == "qui"'; For these operators, a GIN index extracts clauses of the form accessors_chain = constant out of the jsonpath pattern, and does the index search based on the keys and values mentioned in these clauses. The accessors chain may include .key, [*], and [index] accessors. The jsonb_ops operator class also supports .* and .** accessors, but the jsonb_path_ops operator class does not. Although the jsonb_path_ops operator class supports only queries with the @>, @? and @@ operators, it has notable performance advantages over the default operator class jsonb_ops. A jsonb_path_ops index is usually much smaller than a jsonb_ops index over the same data, and the specificity of searches is better, particularly when queries contain keys that appear frequently in the data. Therefore search operations typically perform better than with the default operator class. The technical difference between a jsonb_ops and a jsonb_path_ops GIN index is that the former creates independent index items for each key and value in the data, while the latter creates index items only for each value in the data. For this purpose, the term value includes array elements, though JSON terminology sometimes considers array elements distinct from values within objects. Basically, each jsonb_path_ops index item is a hash of the value and the key(s) leading to it; for example to index {"foo": {"bar": "baz"}}, a single index item would be created incorporating all three of foo, bar, and baz into the hash value. Thus a containment query looking for this structure would result in an extremely specific index search; but there is no way at all to find out whether foo appears as a key. On the other hand, a jsonb_ops index would create three index items representing foo, bar, and baz separately; then to do the containment query, it would look for rows containing all three of these items. While GIN indexes can perform such an AND search fairly efficiently, it will still be less specific and slower than the equivalent jsonb_path_ops search, especially if there are a very large number of rows containing any single one of the three index items. A disadvantage of the jsonb_path_ops approach is that it produces no index entries for JSON structures not containing any values, such as {"a": {}}. If a search for documents containing such a structure is requested, it will require a full-index scan, which is quite slow. jsonb_path_ops is therefore ill-suited for applications that often perform such searches. jsonb also supports btree and hash indexes. These are usually useful only if it's important to check equality of complete JSON documents. The btree ordering for jsonb datums is seldom of great interest, but for completeness it is: Object > Array > Boolean > Number > String > Null Object with n pairs > object with n - 1 pairs Array with n elements > array with n - 1 elements Objects with equal numbers of pairs are compared in the order: key-1, value-1, key-2 ... Note that object keys are compared in their storage order; in particular, since shorter keys are stored before longer keys, this can lead to results that might be unintuitive, such as: { "aa": 1, "c": 1} > {"b": 1, "d": 1} Similarly, arrays with equal numbers of elements are compared in the order: element-1, element-2 ... Primitive JSON values are compared using the same comparison rules as for the underlying PostgreSQL data type. Strings are compared using the default database collation. The jsonb data type supports array-style subscripting expressions to extract and modify elements. Nested values can be indicated by chaining subscripting expressions, following the same rules as the path argument in the jsonb_set function. If a jsonb value is an array, numeric subscripts start at zero, and negative integers count backwards from the last element of the array. Slice expressions are not supported. The result of a subscripting expression is always of the jsonb data type. UPDATE statements may use subscripting in the SET clause to modify jsonb values. Subscript paths must be traversable for all affected values insofar as they exist. For instance, the path val['a']['b']['c'] can be traversed all the way to c if every val, val['a'], and val['a']['b'] is an object. If any val['a'] or val['a']['b'] is not defined, it will be created as an empty object and filled as necessary. However, if any val itself or one of the intermediary values is defined as a non-object such as a string, number, or jsonb null, traversal cannot proceed so an error is raised and the transaction aborted. An example of subscripting syntax: -- Extract object value by key SELECT ('{"a": 1}'::jsonb)['a']; -- Extract nested object value by key path SELECT ('{"a": {"b": {"c": 1}}}'::jsonb)['a']['b']['c']; -- Extract array element by index SELECT ('[1, "2", null]'::jsonb)[1]; -- Update object value by key. Note the quotes around '1': the assigned -- value must be of the jsonb type as well UPDATE table_name SET jsonb_field['key'] = '1'; -- This will raise an error if any record's jsonb_field['a']['b'] is something -- other than an object. For example, the value {"a": 1} has a numeric value -- of the key 'a'. UPDATE table_name SET jsonb_field['a']['b']['c'] = '1'; -- Filter records using a WHERE clause with subscripting. Since the result of -- subscripting is jsonb, the value we compare it against must also be jsonb. -- The double quotes make "value" also a valid jsonb string. SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE jsonb_field['key'] = '"value"'; jsonb assignment via subscripting handles a few edge cases differently from jsonb_set. When a source jsonb value is NULL, assignment via subscripting will proceed as if it was an empty JSON value of the type (object or array) implied by the subscript key: -- Where jsonb_field was NULL, it is now {"a": 1} UPDATE table_name SET jsonb_field['a'] = '1'; -- Where jsonb_field was NULL, it is now [1] UPDATE table_name SET jsonb_field[0] = '1'; If an index is specified for an array containing too few elements, NULL elements will be appended until the index is reachable and the value can be set. -- Where jsonb_field was [], it is now [null, null, 2]; -- where jsonb_field was [0], it is now [0, null, 2] UPDATE table_name SET jsonb_field[2] = '2'; A jsonb value will accept assignments to nonexistent subscript paths as long as the last existing element to be traversed is an object or array, as implied by the corresponding subscript (the element indicated by the last subscript in the path is not traversed and may be anything). Nested array and object structures will be created, and in the former case null-padded, as specified by the subscript path until the assigned value can be placed. -- Where jsonb_field was {}, it is now {"a": [{"b": 1}]} UPDATE table_name SET jsonb_field['a'][0]['b'] = '1'; -- Where jsonb_field was [], it is now [null, {"a": 1}] UPDATE table_name SET jsonb_field[1]['a'] = '1'; Additional extensions are available that implement transforms for the jsonb type for different procedural languages. The extensions for PL/Perl are called jsonb_plperl and jsonb_plperlu. If you use them, jsonb values are mapped to Perl arrays, hashes, and scalars, as appropriate. The extension for PL/Python is called jsonb_plpython3u. If you use it, jsonb values are mapped to Python dictionaries, lists, and scalars, as appropriate. Of these extensions, jsonb_plperl is considered trusted, that is, it can be installed by non-superusers who have CREATE privilege on the current database. The rest require superuser privilege to install. jsonpath The jsonpath type implements support for the SQL/JSON path language in PostgreSQL to efficiently query JSON data. It provides a binary representation of the parsed SQL/JSON path expression that specifies the items to be retrieved by the path engine from the JSON data for further processing with the SQL/JSON query functions. The semantics of SQL/JSON path predicates and operators generally follow SQL. At the same time, to provide a natural way of working with JSON data, SQL/JSON path syntax uses some JavaScript conventions: Dot (.) is used for member access. Square brackets ([]) are used for array access. SQL/JSON arrays are 0-relative, unlike regular SQL arrays that start from 1. Numeric literals in SQL/JSON path expressions follow JavaScript rules, which are different from both SQL and JSON in some minor details. For example, SQL/JSON path allows .1 and 1., which are invalid in JSON. Non-decimal integer literals and underscore separators are supported, for example, 1_000_000, 0x1EEE_FFFF, 0o273, 0b100101. In SQL/JSON path (and in JavaScript, but not in SQL proper), there must not be an underscore separator directly after the radix prefix. An SQL/JSON path expression is typically written in an SQL query as an SQL character string literal, so it must be enclosed in single quotes, and any single quotes desired within the value must be doubled (see ). Some forms of path expressions require string literals within them. These embedded string literals follow JavaScript/ECMAScript conventions: they must be surrounded by double quotes, and backslash escapes may be used within them to represent otherwise-hard-to-type characters. In particular, the way to write a double quote within an embedded string literal is \", and to write a backslash itself, you must write \\. Other special backslash sequences include those recognized in JSON strings: \b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v for various ASCII control characters, and \uNNNN for a Unicode character identified by its 4-hex-digit code point. The backslash syntax also includes two cases not allowed by JSON: \xNN for a character code written with only two hex digits, and \u{N...} for a character code written with 1 to 6 hex digits. A path expression consists of a sequence of path elements, which can be any of the following: Path literals of JSON primitive types: Unicode text, numeric, true, false, or null. Path variables listed in . Accessor operators listed in . jsonpath operators and methods listed in . Parentheses, which can be used to provide filter expressions or define the order of path evaluation. For details on using jsonpath expressions with SQL/JSON query functions, see . Variable Description $ A variable representing the JSON value being queried (the context item). $varname A named variable. Its value can be set by the parameter vars of several JSON processing functions; see for details. @ A variable representing the result of path evaluation in filter expressions. Accessor Operator Description .key ."$varname" Member accessor that returns an object member with the specified key. If the key name matches some named variable starting with $ or does not meet the JavaScript rules for an identifier, it must be enclosed in double quotes to make it a string literal. .* Wildcard member accessor that returns the values of all members located at the top level of the current object. .** Recursive wildcard member accessor that processes all levels of the JSON hierarchy of the current object and returns all the member values, regardless of their nesting level. This is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL/JSON standard. .**{level} .**{start_level to end_level} Like .**, but selects only the specified levels of the JSON hierarchy. Nesting levels are specified as integers. Level zero corresponds to the current object. To access the lowest nesting level, you can use the last keyword. This is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL/JSON standard. [subscript, ...] Array element accessor. subscript can be given in two forms: index or start_index to end_index. The first form returns a single array element by its index. The second form returns an array slice by the range of indexes, including the elements that correspond to the provided start_index and end_index. The specified index can be an integer, as well as an expression returning a single numeric value, which is automatically cast to integer. Index zero corresponds to the first array element. You can also use the last keyword to denote the last array element, which is useful for handling arrays of unknown length. [*] Wildcard array element accessor that returns all array elements.