Partial index of JSONB field with type cast in Postgres

Question

There is a table, which has metadata jsonb field. I created a partial index where (metadata->>'processed')::boolean is FALSE.

I can not clarify, will it work only when {'processed': 'false'}, or also for case where is no processed key. Will this index also work for record with no key as {} for example?

Jonathan Jacobson · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-26 15:08:43Z

1

This index will only cover rows that have a key called "processed" of which the value is "false", 0 or any other literal that can be cast to boolean.

I consider such an index problematic because if someone tries to insert a "metadata" field where "processed" equals "sheep", for instance, then the insert operation will fail because the expression "sheep" cannot be evaluated as boolean.

I think that indexes are not supposed to act as check constraints because it can cause a lot of confusion.

answered Jan 26, 2021 at 15:08

Jonathan Jacobson

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