Advice on using OPENJSON to parse a nested array

Question

I am hoping somebody can help point me in the right direction as I'm trying to parse a json file into sql using OPENJSON. I have a structure which looks like this:

DECLARE @json AS NVARCHAR(MAX) = '

[{
        "id": "78",
        "Version": {
            "Value": "12"
        },

        "Names": [{
                "NameId": {
                    "Value": "8516365"
                },
                "id": "328787",
                "NameLinkType": {
                    "Value": "A"

                    "CommsChains": {
                        "Value": [[{
                                    "com_primary": {
                                        "Value": "Y"
                                    },
                                    "com_recd": {
                                        "Value": "2020-07-07 00:00:00.000"
                                    },
                                    "com_ack": {
                                        "Value": "2020-07-09 00:00:00.000"

                                    },
                                }
                            ]]
                ),  },
            },
                    
        ],
        
    }
]'

I am able to parse the majority of the JSON correctly, so for each ID I can return values such as Version or NameId . However, I am unable to return any dates in respect of com_recd or com_ack , which sit under CommsChains [Object] – Value [Array] – [0] [Array]

Answer 1

It looks like there are some syntactic errors in your JSON. After having them fixed, I was able to try and find the JSON paths to the date expressions to the date values. This is the SQL:

DECLARE @json AS NVARCHAR(MAX) = '
[{
        "id": "78",
        "Version": {
            "Value": "12"
        },

        "Names": [{
                "NameId": {
                    "Value": "8516365"
                },
                "id": "328787",
                "NameLinkType": {
                    "Value": "A",

                    "CommsChains": {
                        "Value": [[{
                                    "com_primary": {
                                        "Value": "Y"
                                    },
                                    "com_recd": {
                                        "Value": "2020-07-07 00:00:00.000"
                                    },
                                    "com_ack": {
                                        "Value": "2020-07-09 00:00:00.000"

                                    }
                                }
                            ]]
                    }
                }
            }
                    
        ]
        
    }
]'
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Version');--Value 12 1
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names');
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names[0]');
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names[0].NameLinkType');
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names[0].NameLinkType.CommsChains');
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names[0].NameLinkType.CommsChains.Value');
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names[0].NameLinkType.CommsChains.Value[0]');
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names[0].NameLinkType.CommsChains.Value[0][0]');

select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names[0].NameLinkType.CommsChains.Value[0][0].com_recd'); --selecting path for com_recd
select * from openjson(@json, '$[0].Names[0].NameLinkType.CommsChains.Value[0][0].com_ack');  --selecting path for com_ack

Herein I show the selects to the different parts of your JSON. The arrays'content are always referenced as [0] as its always the first index to select here.

For more information on JSON paths on the SQL server look here