How to cast postgres JSON column to int without key being present in JSON (simple JSON values)? - sql

Question

I am working on data in postgresql as in the following mytable with the fields id (type int) and val (type json):
id
val
1
"null"
2
"0"
3
"2"
The values in the json column val are simple JSON values, i.e. just strings with surrounding quotes and have no key.
I have looked at the SO post How to convert postgres json to integer and attempted something like the solution presented there
SELECT (mytable.val->>'key')::int FROM mytable;
but in my case, I do not have a key to address the field and leaving it empty does not work:
SELECT (mytable.val->>'')::int as val_int FROM mytable;
This returns NULL for all rows.
The best I have come up with is the following (casting to varchar first, trimming the quotes, filtering out the string "null" and then casting to int):
SELECT id, nullif(trim('"' from mytable.val::varchar), 'null')::int as val_int FROM mytable;
which works, but surely cannot be the best way to do it, right?
Here is a db<>fiddle with the example table and the statements above.

Answer 1

Found the way to do it:
You can access the content via the keypath (see e.g. this PostgreSQL JSON cheatsheet):
Using the # operator, you can access the json fields through the keypath. Specifying an empty keypath like this {} allows you to get your content without a key.
Using double angle brackets >> in the accessor will return the content without the quotes, so there is no need for the trim() function.
Overall, the statement
select id
, nullif(val#>>'{}', 'null')::int as val_int
from mytable
;
will return the contents of the former json column as int, respectvely NULL (in postgresql >= 9.4):
id
val_int
1
NULL
2
0
3
2
See updated db<>fiddle here.
--
Note: As pointed out by #Mike in his comment above, if the column format is jsonb, you can also use val->>0 to dereference scalars. However, if the format is json, the ->> operator will yield null as result. See this db<>fiddle.