Working with semi-structured data (complex - variant)

[QueryingQuagga]

Edit: value of inner key "value" was an array - I have added the square brackets to the example below.

Hello all,

I'm working with Spark SQL API for querying semi-structured data in Databricks. Currently I'm having a hard time understanding how I can navigate a complex column of the type `VARIANT` to extract field values that are nested at multiple levels.

Take the below example (column name "extendedinformation") in a table (table name "orders") that have been saved as a complex type containing nested json like so:

[
  {
    "name": "CHANNEL",
    "value": "[{\"id\":\"DUMMYID1\",\"name\":\"DUMMYCHANNEL1\",\"role\":\"DUMMYROLE1\"}]"
  }
]

When querying the data using Spark SQL API on a SQL Warehouse in the Preview Channel (2024.40), I'm unable to find the best way to extract the inner field "name" ($[0].value.name).

If I use variant functions and shortcuts as so:

SELECT extendedinformation:[0].value FROM orders

i get back the contents of $[0].value, and as far as the front-end editor in Databricks shows, this column is a complex type as this (whether this is the true underlying truth is unknown to me, but this i what is shown in the online editor):

[{"id":"DUMMYID1","name":"DUMMYCHANNEL1","role":"DUMMYROLE1"}]

Note that it seems like the contents have been parsed automatically and correctly.

Now I had hoped I could do the following:

SELECT extendedinformation:[0].value.name FROM orders

or

SELECT extendedinformation:[0].value:name FROM orders

But all I get back are `NULL` values.

There might be way to get it to work wrapping `GET_JSON_OBJECT()`, but this is very finicky, has resulted in errors in terms of parsing without changing modes (`FAILFAST` -> `PERMISSIVE`) and, as far as I can understand, might very well incure a performance penalty because of conversions between complex and strings (and then parsing).

How should one approach this using complex functionality in Spark SQL in Databricks?

[Rjdudley]

Is this of any help: Query JSON strings - Azure Databricks | Microsoft Learn?  A companion article if you're actually using VARIANT is Query variant data - Azure Databricks | Microsoft Learn.

[QueryingQuagga]

Thank you - I'm looking into a solution using `LATERAL`.

[szymon_dybczak]

Hi @QueryingQuagga ,

Maybe something like that?:

%sql
WITH src AS (
    SELECT 
      parse_json('{
        "extendedinformation":[
            { "name": "CHANNEL", "value": [{\"id\":\"DUMMYID1\",\"name\":\"DUMMYCHANNEL1\",\"role\":\"DUMMYROLE1\"}]},
            { "name": "CHANNEL2", "value": [{\"id\":\"DUMMYID2\",\"name\":\"DUMMYCHANNEL2\",\"role\":\"DUMMYROLE2\"}]}
        ]
      }') as data
)
SELECT data:extendedinformation:[0].value[0].name
FROM src

And here's an outcome:

[QueryingQuagga]

I'm unsure if the schema that you are parsing above is the correct one though (I might be misunderstanding). If I edit your json to the following:

{
  "extendedinformation":[
      {
          "name": "CHANNEL",
          "value": "[{\"id\":\"DUMMYID1\",\"name\":\"DUMMYCHANNEL1\",\"role\":\"DUMMYROLE1\"}]"
      }
  ]
}

Then I can't even get the `parse_json()` function to parse (although the above is valid json).

[szymon_dybczak · Accepted solution]

Hi @QueryingQuagga ,

So your problem comes from the fact, that you have nested json string as a value. That's why you get null when you're trying to do following:

SELECT extendedinformation:[0].value.name

So what you can do is to explode elements in extendedinformation array and then you can use from_json to parse string contained in value key:

"value": "[{\"id\":\"DUMMYID1\",\"name\":\"DUMMYCHANNEL1\",\"role\":\"DUMMYROLE1\"}]"

Below is a full example:

%sql

WITH src AS (
  SELECT 
    parse_json('{
        "extendedinformation": [
            {
                "name": "CHANNEL",
                "value": "[{\\"id\\":\\"DUMMYID1\\",\\"name\\":\\"DUMMYCHANNEL1\\",\\"role\\":\\"DUMMYROLE1\\"}]"
            },
            {
                "name": "CHANNEL2",
                "value": "[{\\"id\\":\\"DUMMYID2\\",\\"name\\":\\"DUMMYCHANNEL2\\",\\"role\\":\\"DUMMYROLE2\\"}]"
            }
        ]
    }') AS data
),
extended AS (
  SELECT exp.value as extendedinformation_exploded   
  FROM src,
  LATERAL variant_explode(data:extendedinformation) exp
)
SELECT *, from_json(extendedinformation_exploded:value::STRING, 'ARRAY<MAP<STRING, STRING>>')[0].name AS value_array 
FROM extended

[QueryingQuagga]

---

So your problem comes from the fact, that you have nested json string as a value.

---

This is of course the case and I see this now. I think I might have been confused by not knowing enough by VARIANT and the fact that the online DBR SQL editor will do some helpful semi-transparent output formatting.

Thank you for your help - I can now do a lateral explode and recombine to original granularity. If not performant enough I will go upstream and see if something can be done closer to the source schema.

[szymon_dybczak]

Hi @QueryingQuagga ,

Great that you managed to solve the problem. Learning new features can sometimes be really confusing 🙂