Re: jsonb_set: update or upsert default? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Petr Jelinek
Subject Re: jsonb_set: update or upsert default?
Date
Msg-id 5560DD16.60206@2ndquadrant.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: jsonb_set: update or upsert default?  ("David E. Wheeler" <david@justatheory.com>)
Responses Re: jsonb_set: update or upsert default?  (Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>)
List pgsql-hackers
On 23/05/15 17:59, David E. Wheeler wrote:
> On May 22, 2015, at 7:22 PM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote:
>
>> The proposed flag for jsonb_set (the renamed jsonb_replace) in the patch I recently published is set to false,
meaningthat the default behaviour is to require all elements of the path including the last to be present. What that
doesis effectively UPDATE for jsonb. If the flag is true, then the last element can be absent, in which case it's
created,so this is basically UPSERT for jsonb. The question is which should be the default. We got into the weeds on
thiswith suggestions of throwing errors on missing paths, but that's going nowhere, and I want to get discussion back
ontothe topic of what should be the default.
 
>
> Here’s JavaScript in Chrome, FWIW:
>
> var f = {}
> f["foo"][0] = “bar"
> Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property '0' of undefined
>      at <anonymous>:2:13
>      at Object.InjectedScript._evaluateOn (<anonymous>:895:140)
>      at Object.InjectedScript._evaluateAndWrap (<anonymous>:828:34)
>      at Object.InjectedScript.evaluate (<anonymous>:694:21)
>

As I understand it, that's not really the same as what Andrew says. The 
real example of that is> var f = {}> f["foo"] = “bar"> f
{ foo: 'bar' }

which works fine in JavaScript and most other dynamic languages like 
Python or Perl. So my opinion is that default should be true here.

Another thing I noticed is that while following looks as expected:
# select jsonb_set('{"baz":1}'::jsonb, '{foo}', '"bar"', true);        jsonb_set
-------------------------- {"baz": 1, "foo": "bar"}
(1 row)

If I use empty jsonb object it does not work anymore:
# select jsonb_set('{}', '{foo}', '"bar"', true); jsonb_set
----------- {}
(1 row)


--  Petr Jelinek                  http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training &
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