How to select a field of a JSON object coming from the WHERE condition - sql

Question

I have this table
id name json
1 alex {"type": "user", "items": [ {"name": "banana", "color": "yellow"}, {"name": "apple", "color": "red"} ] }
2 peter {"type": "user", "items": [ {"name": "watermelon", "color": "green"}, {"name": "pepper", "color": "red"} ] }
3 john {"type": "user", "items": [ {"name": "tomato", "color": "red"} ] }
4 carl {"type": "user", "items": [ {"name": "orange", "color": "orange"}, {"name": "nut", "color": "brown"} ] }
Important, each json object can have different number of "items", but what I need is the "product name" of JUST the object that matched in the WHERE condition.
My desired output would be the two first columns and just the name of the item, WHERE the color is like %red%:
id name fruit
1 alex apple
2 peter pepper
3 john tomato
select id, name, ***** (this is what I don't know) FROM table
where JSON_EXTRACT(json, "$.items[*].color") like '%red%'

Answer 1

I would recommend json_table(), if you are running MySQL 8.0:
select t.id, t.name, x.name as fruit
from mytable t
cross join json_table(
t.js,
'$.items[*]' columns (name varchar(50) path '$.name', color varchar(50) path '$.color')
) x
where x.color = 'red'
This function is not implemented in MariaDB. We can unnest manually with the help of a numbers table:
select t.id, t.name,
json_unquote(json_extract(t.js, concat('$.items[', x.num, '].name'))) as fruit
from mytable t
inner join (select 0 as num union all select 1 union all select 2 ...) x(num)
on x.num < json_length(t.js, '$.items')
where json_unquote(json_extract(t.js, concat('$.items[', x.num, '].color'))) = 'red'

Answer 2

You can use JSON_EXTRACT() function along with Recursive Common Table Expression in order to generate rows dynamically such as
WITH RECURSIVE cte AS
(
SELECT 1 AS n
UNION ALL
SELECT n + 1
FROM cte
WHERE cte.n < (SELECT MAX(JSON_LENGTH(json)) FROM t )
)
SELECT id, name,
JSON_UNQUOTE(JSON_EXTRACT(json,CONCAT('$.items[',n-1,'].name'))) AS fruit
FROM cte
JOIN t
WHERE JSON_EXTRACT(json,CONCAT('$.items[',n-1,'].color')) = "red"
Demo