Is it possible for CQL to parse a JSON object to insert data? - cassandra

Question

From what I looked so far, it seems impossible with Cassandra. But I thought I'd give it a shot:
How can I select a value of a json property, parsed from a json object string, and use it as part of an update / insert statement in Cassandra?
For example, I'm given the json object:
{
id:123,
some_string:"hello there",
mytimestamp: "2019-09-02T22:02:24.355Z"
}
And this is the table definition:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS myspace.mytable (
id text,
data blob,
PRIMARY KEY (id)
);
Now the thing to know at this point is that for a given reason the data field will be set to the json string. In other words, there is no 1:1 mapping between the given json and the table columns, but the data field contains the json object as kind of a blob value.
... Is it possible to parse the timestamp value of the given json object as part of an insert statement?
Pseudo code example of what I mean, which obviously doesn't work ($myJson is a placeholder for the json object string above):
INSERT INTO myspace.mytable (id, data)
VALUES (123, $myJson)
USING timestamp toTimeStamp($myJson.mytimestamp)

Answer 1

The quick answer is no, it's not possible to do that with CQL.
The norm is to parse the elements of the JSON object within your application to extract the corresponding values to construct the CQL statement.
As a side note, I would discourage using the CQL blob type due to possible performance issues should the blob size exceeed 1MB. If it's JSON, consider storing it as CQL text type instead. Cheers!

Answer 2

Worth mentioning, but CQL can do a limited amount of JSON parsing on its own. Albeit, not as detailed as you're asking here (ex: USING timestamp).
But something like this works:
> CREATE TABLE myjsontable (
... id TEXT,
... some_string TEXT,
... PRIMARY KEY (id));
> INSERT INTO myjsontable JSON '{"id":"123","some_string":"hello there"}';
> SELECT * FROM myjsontable WHERE id='123';
id | some_string
-----+-------------
123 | hello there
(1 rows)
In your case you'd either have to redesign the table or the JSON payload so that they match. But as Erick and Cédrick have mentioned, the USING timestamp part would have to happen client-side.

Answer 3

What you detailed is doable with Cassandra.
Timestamp
To insert timestamp in a query it should be formatted as an ISO 8601 String. Sample examples could be found here. In your code, you might have to convert your incoming value to expected type and format.
Blob:
Blob expects to store binary data, as such it cannot be put Ad hoc as a String in a CQL query. (you can use TEXT type to do it if you want to encode base64)
When you need to insert binary data you need to provide proper type as well. For instance if you are working with Javascript to need to provide a Buffer as describe in the documentation Then when you execute your query you externalized your parameters
const sampleId = 123;
const sampleData = Buffer.from('hello world', 'utf8');
const sampleTimeStamp = new Date();
client.execute('INSERT INTO myspace.mytable (id, data) VALUES (?, ?) USING timestamp toTimeStamp(?)', [ sampleId, sampleData, sampleTimeStamp ]);