Oracle Split Delimited String Into Rows

Question

tough one here. We are running 11g, so we do not have JSON support right now. My goal is to split a JSON string on a delimiter into rows, then filter on each of those rows. Is this possible? Here is an example:

{
   "section_1": {
      "section_publish": true,
       "section_body": "<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">
    },
   "section_2": {
      "section_publish": false,
       "section_body": "<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">
    },
   "section_3": {
      "section_publish": true,
       "section_body": "<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">
    }
}

So, basically I am hoping to split the sections, on }, Then, once those are in "rows" filter on "section_publish": true, then filter on those.

The JSON strings are kept in a table, so this will be part of a SELECT statement:

SELECT id, name.....
FROM json_table
WHERE {json result from above} LIKE '%string to compare%';

Does it make sense? Can this be done in SQL?

Answer 1

The example below may not work for all variations of JSON that you may have, but this query does work for the example JSON provided.

Query

WITH
    json_test (json_val) AS (SELECT EMPTY_CLOB () || '{
  "section_1": {
    "section_publish": true,
    "section_body": "<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">"
  },
  "section_2": {
    "section_publish": false,
    "section_body": "<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">"
  },
  "section_3": {
    "section_publish": true,
    "section_body": "<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">"
  }
}' FROM DUAL),
    json_split
    AS
        (    SELECT TRIM ('"' FROM REGEXP_SUBSTR (json_val,
                                                  '".*"',
                                                  1,
                                                  1 + ((LEVEL - 1) * 3)))    AS section,
                    TRIM (TRIM (',' FROM SUBSTR (REGEXP_SUBSTR (json_val,
                                                                '"section_publish".*',
                                                                1,
                                                                LEVEL),
                                                 19)))                       AS section_publish,
                    REPLACE (
                        TRIM ('"' FROM TRIM (TRIM (',' FROM SUBSTR (REGEXP_SUBSTR (json_val,
                                                                                   '"section_body".*',
                                                                                   1,
                                                                                   LEVEL),
                                                                    16)))),
                        '\"',
                        '"')                                                 AS section_body
               FROM json_test
         CONNECT BY LEVEL < REGEXP_COUNT (json_val, '{'))
SELECT TO_CHAR (section)             AS section,
       TO_CHAR (section_publish)     AS section_publish,
       TO_CHAR (section_body)        AS section_body
  FROM json_split
 WHERE TO_CHAR (section_publish) = 'true';

Result

     SECTION    SECTION_PUBLISH                        SECTION_BODY
____________ __________________ ___________________________________
section_1    true               <p style="text-align: justify;">
section_3    true               <p style="text-align: justify;">