Re: Add jsonb_compact(...) for whitespace-free jsonb to text

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Sehrope Sarkuni <sehrope(at)jackdb(dot)com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The default text representation of jsonb adds whitespace in between
> key/value pairs (after the colon ":") and after successive properties
> (after the comma ","):
>
> postgres=# SELECT '{"b":2,"a":1}'::jsonb::text;
> text
> ------------------
> {"a": 1, "b": 2}
> (1 row)
>
> AFAIK, there's also no guarantee on the specific order of the resulting
> properties in the text representation either. I would suppose it's fixed
> for a given jsonb value within a database major version but across major
> versions it could change (if the underlying representation changes).
>
> I originally ran into this when comparing the hashes of the text
> representation of jsonb columns. The results didn't match up because the
> javascript function JSON.stringify(...) does not add any extra whitespace.
>
> It'd be nice to have a stable text representation of a jsonb value with
> minimal whitespace. The latter would also save a few bytes per record in
> text output formats, on the wire, and in backups (ex: COPY ... TO STDOUT).
>

+1

I cannot comment on the patch itself, but I welcome jsonb_compact() or some
way to get JSON with no inserted whitespace.