Question

This might be simple enough with basic SQL or it might need a REGEXP but I’ve hit a brick wall.

My data is stored in a JSON string like these two examples (each in 1 field):

[{"id":"2","value":["1","3"]},{"id":"3","value":["1","2"]}]

and:

[{"id":"3","value":["2"]},{"id":"3","value":["1","2","5"]}]

I want to search for values in between those last brackets which might consist of many numbers ["1","2","5"] or just a single on ["2"]. The beginning numbers correspond to 2 categories – the single "id":"2" and "id":"3".

Using %"2"% with a simple LIKE of course matches everything. I can query by the "id":"$var" to return each category then use PHP to filter it through after we have the results, but the data can be quite large and I’m sure it’s easy for a SQL guru.

I don’t have the option to change the format of the field, it has to remain as JSON.

Any help appreciated! Thanks.

Answer 1

I think I solved it by using this: AND extra_fields REGEXP '(.*"id":"2".*)("\[.*"1".*\]")'. It’s more to do with regular expressions than it is to do with MySQL 😛

comment: (I couldn’t find comment button)
This syntax becomes clearer when you learn that “extra_fields” is the name of the column in the table