Somewhat related to (or rather not related to) やったーJavaScriptの動くMySQLできたよー - 愛と勇気と缶ビール, I have written a MySQL UDF that parses JSON strings. The UDF introduces one function: json_get, that parses a JSON object or an array and returns one of the properties. SELECT json_get('{"a":1}', 'a') => 1 SELECT json_get('{"a":1}', 'b') => NULL SELECT json_get('[1,2,3]', 2) => 3 SELECT json_get('{"a":[2]}', 'a