Earlier quoted context omitted.
The benefit of a query language is that it can be described declaratively (i.e. in a non-executable text file, perhaps within JSON itself), and then programs written in any language can execute its query logic using a standard interpreter written in that specific programming language. So you get reusability of queries across the stack, in all languages that implement a parser against the spec. Your example only provi…
I really appreciate this comment. I was trying to figure out why I wouldn't use native data types and functions, but this makes it clear. In your opinion, where would someone be storing the json such that they'd benefit from a tool like this? The only time I use json outside of pulling it from an API (where I can convert it to a native object) is probably storing it in postgres, where I've already got json querying t…
- Infrastructure configuration stored in JSON. Query could reference other JSON files, or the JSON file itself (loops would need to be considered).
- Declarative reactive programming, e.g. platforms like IFTT. You might want to take certain actions based on data in a JSON post. The IFTT GUI would create JSON config files that its server side parsers can safely use without eval'ing code to decide which action to take.
- Adding conditional logic to jsonschema form generation. Recently I've built a questionnaire renderer in react that renders forms based on jsonschema. The user creates forms with a GUI, which compiles them to JSON, and then the renderer knows how to render. Conditional logic (e.g. question B is required if question A === true) can be quite limited when constrained to pure JSON. Something like this could help with that.
The nice thing about declarative syntax is you can build a GUI to generate it, so users never use the JSON itself, but you can store it in a database, safely execute rules based on it, etc. without requiring programming from the user.
That said, there are usually better ways to accomplish this, like in pure JSON for example. Mongo syntax achieved this, with declarative operators like $or{}, ${sum}, etc., but it can be quite cumbersome.