Question

Is any way to query specific values from a JSON stored in varchar or string row in MySql? A little bit as using MongoDB (Or couch or raven) with out old friend MySql.

I know that even if I get to queries this values, I still will be missing all the features of NoSql solutions, but I just need to store schemaless information in MySQL.

PS: what if the data is stored as XML instead of JSON?

UPDATE: I want to add something for future reference:

If you are looking for a way to have schemaless storage in a shared hosting, the easiest way is to sign up for a montodb hosted solution, or couchdb hosted solution (https://cloudant.com/#!/solutions/cloud for example).

Answer 1

You cannot query JSON as ‘JSON’ within MySQL AFAIK. You can perform any operation which you can for that value as a ‘varchar’ but not as ‘structured data in JSON format’. In other words, you can do ‘like’ or ‘=’, but you will not be able to do something like where x.y = 4, or something like order by x.z, given the JSON structure of:

 {
    x: {
        y: 4,
        z: 10 
    } 
}