jsonnosqlweb-standardsqueryingdynamic-queries

Is there a query language for JSON?

Is there a (roughly) SQL or XQuery-like language for querying JSON?

I'm thinking of very small datasets that map nicely to JSON where it would be nice to easily answer queries such as "what are all the values of X where Y > 3" or to do the usual SUM / COUNT type operations.

As completely made-up example, something like this:

[{"x": 2, "y": 0}}, {"x": 3, "y": 1}, {"x": 4, "y": 1}]

SUM(X) WHERE Y > 0     (would equate to 7)
LIST(X) WHERE Y > 0    (would equate to [3,4])

I'm thinking this would work both client-side and server-side with results being converted to the appropriate language-specific data structure (or perhaps kept as JSON)

A quick Googling suggests that people have thought about it and implemented a few things (JAQL), but it doesn't seem like a standard usage or set of libraries has emerged yet. While each function is fairly trivial to implement on its own, if someone has already done it right I don't want to re-invent the wheel.

Any suggestions?

Edit: This may indeed be a bad idea or JSON may be too generic a format for what I'm thinking.. The reason for wanting a query language instead of just doing the summing/etc functions directly as needed is that I hope to build the queries dynamically based on user-input. Kinda like the argument that "we don't need SQL, we can just write the functions we need". Eventually that either gets out of hand or you end up writing your own version of SQL as you push it further and further. (Okay, I know that is a bit of a silly argument, but you get the idea..)

Solution

  • EDIT Sept 2022:

    JMESPath seems to be the most widely-used, fastest-growing, and best-reviewed of alternatives for this. It has many features, including "where"-style filters.

    ORIGINAL:

    Sure, how about:

    They all seem to be a bit work in progress, but work to some degree. They are also similar to XPath and XQuery conceptually; even though XML and JSON have different conceptual models (hierarchic vs object/struct).

    EDIT Sept 2015:

    Actually there is now JSON Pointer standard that allows very simple and efficient traversal of JSON content. It is not only formally specified, but also supported by many JSON libraries. So I would call it actual real useful standard, although due to its limited expressiveness it may or may not be considered Query Language per se.