PostgreSQL - jsonb - How to get the datatype for value in query with jsonpath

Question

In PostgreSQL using jsonb column, is there a way to select / convert an attribute with actual datatype the datatype instead of getting it as a string object when using jsonpath? I would like to try to avoid cast as well as -> and ->> type of construct since I have to select many attributes with very deep paths, I am trying to do it using jsonpath and * or ** in the path

Is it possible to do it this way or must I use the -> and ->> for each node in the path ? This will make the query look complicated as I have to select about 35+ attributes in the select with quite deep paths.

Also, how do we remove quotes from the selected value?

This is what I was trying, but doesn't work to remove quotes from Text value and gives an error on numeric

Select 
    PolicyNumber AS "POLICYNUMBER",
    jsonb_path_query(payload, '$.**.ProdModelID')::text   AS "PRODMODELID",
    jsonb_path_query(payload, '$.**.CashOnHand')::float   AS "CASHONHAND"
from policy_json_table

the PRODMODELID still shows the quotes around the value and when I add ::float to second column, it gives an error

SQL Error [22023]: ERROR: cannot cast jsonb string to type double precision

Thank you

Answer 1

When you try to directly cast the jsonb value to another datatype, postgres will attempt to first convert it to a json text and then parse that. See

• How to convert Postgres json(b) to integer?
• How to convert Postgres json(b) to float?
• How to convert Postgres json(b) to text?
• How to convert Postgres json(b) to boolean?

When you have strings in your JSON values, to avoid the quotes you'll need to extract them by using one of the json functions/operators returning text. In your case:

SELECT
    PolicyNumber AS "POLICYNUMBER",
    jsonb_path_query(payload, '$.**.ProdModelID') #>> '{}'         AS "PRODMODELID",
    (jsonb_path_query(payload, '$.**.CashOnHand') #>> '{}')::float AS "CASHONHAND"
FROM policy_json_table