Searching trough JSON data stored in MySql - mysql

Question

I've a big set of json data inside a database, the data wasn't supposed to be queryed, so the was stored in a very messy way... this is the structure
{
"0": {"key": "Developer(s)", "values": ["Capcom"]},
"1": {"key": "Publisher(s)", "values": ["Capcom"]},
"2": {"key": "Producer(s)", "values": ["Tokuro Fujiwara"]},
"3": {"key": "Composer(s)", "values": ["Setsuo Yamamoto"]},
"4": {"key": "Series", "values": ["X-Men"]},
"6": {"key": "Release", "values": ["EU:", " 1995"]},
"7": {"key": "Mode(s)", "values": ["Single-player"]}
}
I should query inside the db to verify which records has which property (i.e. all records with a "Release" key inside, all that contains the value "Capcom" inside the Developoer key, etc.)
Can someone point me to the right way? I found only examples with simple structures (i.e. { "key": "value" }), here the key is the index number, and the value is an array with two different keys...
Should I find a way to rewrite all the data or there is something easy?
p.s. I'm building a laravel application over this data, so I can also use an eloquent approach.
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

as #Guy L mentioned in his answer, you can use LIKE or REGEX. But, It will be expensive.
example:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE json_column LIKE '%"Release"%';
answering:
Should I find a way to rewrite all the data or there is something easy?
Consider, how often do you have to access this data?
a NoSQL database like MongoDB is a really good usecase for data like this, I have been using Mongo and I am happy with it.
You can easily migrate your data to MongoDB and use a ORM similar to Eloquent model like : https://github.com/jenssegers/laravel-mongodb to communicate with mongo from your laravel project.
Hope it helps you arrive at a solution.

Answer 2

Please refer to
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/json-search-functions.html
which allows you to search for specific value at specific place of the JSON structure.
However, I would suggest - if the data is NOW supposed to be searchable - redesign/convert the data.

Answer 3

Query JSON as a string can be done using the LIKE or REGEXP operators
But in general, since the strings are long an complex it's really not recommended
The best way is reloading the info into proper tables, storing in an SQL way
If your MySQL version is 5.7 or above, you can try some options will its JSON support:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/json.html#json-paths

Answer 4

Thanks for the suggestions about using mysql json specific functions, the column is already in JSON type, so i can definitively use thm, but unfortunally even after reading the mysql documentation i can't figure out how to solve my problem, honestly i'm not a data specialist, i'm kind of confused when dealing with database, so any examples will be appreciated.
So far i've tried to mess up with queries, but i wasn't able to find a correct "selector" for the keys of my dataset, using '$[0]' will return only the first column, i'd need some hints for creating the right syntax using json_extract, json_contains, etc.

Answer 5

Thanks everyone, at the end i've decided to fetch all the data and storing them again properly.