Using row_to_json() with nested joins

Update: In PostgreSQL 9.4 this improves a lot with the introduction of to_json, json_build_object, json_object and json_build_array, though it’s verbose due to the need to name all the fields explicitly:

select
        json_build_object(
                'id', u.id,
                'name', u.name,
                'email', u.email,
                'user_role_id', u.user_role_id,
                'user_role', json_build_object(
                        'id', ur.id,
                        'name', ur.name,
                        'description', ur.description,
                        'duty_id', ur.duty_id,
                        'duty', json_build_object(
                                'id', d.id,
                                'name', d.name
                        )
                )
    )
from users u
inner join user_roles ur on ur.id = u.user_role_id
inner join role_duties d on d.id = ur.duty_id;

For older versions, read on.

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It isn’t limited to a single row, it’s just a bit painful. You can’t alias composite rowtypes using AS, so you need to use an aliased subquery expression or CTE to achieve the effect:

select row_to_json(row)
from (
    select u.*, urd AS user_role
    from users u
    inner join (
        select ur.*, d
        from user_roles ur
        inner join role_duties d on d.id = ur.duty_id
    ) urd(id,name,description,duty_id,duty) on urd.id = u.user_role_id
) row;

produces, via http://jsonprettyprint.com/:

{
  "id": 1,
  "name": "Dan",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "user_role_id": 1,
  "user_role": {
    "id": 1,
    "name": "admin",
    "description": "Administrative duties in the system",
    "duty_id": 1,
    "duty": {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Script Execution"
    }
  }
}

You will want to use array_to_json(array_agg(...)) when you have a 1:many relationship, btw.

The above query should ideally be able to be written as:

select row_to_json(
    ROW(u.*, ROW(ur.*, d AS duty) AS user_role)
)
from users u
inner join user_roles ur on ur.id = u.user_role_id
inner join role_duties d on d.id = ur.duty_id;

… but PostgreSQL’s ROW constructor doesn’t accept AS column aliases. Sadly.

Thankfully, they optimize out the same. Compare the plans:

• The nested subquery version; vs
• The latter nested ROW constructor version with the aliases removed so it executes

Because CTEs are optimisation fences, rephrasing the nested subquery version to use chained CTEs (WITH expressions) may not perform as well, and won’t result in the same plan. In this case you’re kind of stuck with ugly nested subqueries until we get some improvements to row_to_json or a way to override the column names in a ROW constructor more directly.

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Anyway, in general, the principle is that where you want to create a json object with columns a, b, c, and you wish you could just write the illegal syntax:

ROW(a, b, c) AS outername(name1, name2, name3)

you can instead use scalar subqueries returning row-typed values:

(SELECT x FROM (SELECT a AS name1, b AS name2, c AS name3) x) AS outername

Or:

(SELECT x FROM (SELECT a, b, c) AS x(name1, name2, name3)) AS outername

Additionally, keep in mind that you can compose json values without additional quoting, e.g. if you put the output of a json_agg within a row_to_json, the inner json_agg result won’t get quoted as a string, it’ll be incorporated directly as json.

e.g. in the arbitrary example:

SELECT row_to_json(
        (SELECT x FROM (SELECT
                1 AS k1,
                2 AS k2,
                (SELECT json_agg( (SELECT x FROM (SELECT 1 AS a, 2 AS b) x) )
                 FROM generate_series(1,2) ) AS k3
        ) x),
        true
);

the output is:

{"k1":1,
 "k2":2,
 "k3":[{"a":1,"b":2}, 
 {"a":1,"b":2}]}

Note that the json_agg product, [{"a":1,"b":2}, {"a":1,"b":2}], hasn’t been escaped again, as text would be.

This means you can compose json operations to construct rows, you don’t always have to create hugely complex PostgreSQL composite types then call row_to_json on the output.