JSON SerDe Libraries - Amazon Athena
SerDe NamesLibrary NamesHive JSON SerDeOpenX JSON SerDeExample: Deserializing Nested JSONAdditional Resources

JSON SerDe Libraries

In Athena, you can use two SerDe libraries to deserialize JSON data. Deserialization converts the JSON data so that it can be serialized (written out) into a different format like Parquet or ORC.

SerDe Names

Hive-JsonSerDe

Openx-JsonSerDe

Library Names

Use one of the following:

org.apache.hive.hcatalog.data.JsonSerDe

org.openx.data.jsonserde.JsonSerDe

Hive JSON SerDe

The Hive JSON SerDe is commonly used to process JSON data like events. These events are represented as blocks of JSON-encoded text separated by a new line. The Hive JSON SerDe does not allow duplicate keys in map or struct key names.

The following example DDL statement uses the Hive JSON SerDe to create a table based on sample online advertising data. In the LOCATION clause, replace the myregion in s3://myregion.elasticmapreduce/samples/hive-ads/tables/impressions with the region identifier where you run Athena (for example, s3://us-west-2.elasticmapreduce/samples/hive-ads/tables/impressions). 

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE impressions (
    requestbegintime string,
    adid string,
    impressionid string,
    referrer string,
    useragent string,
    usercookie string,
    ip string,
    number string,
    processid string,
    browsercookie string,
    requestendtime string,
    timers struct
                <
                 modellookup:string, 
                 requesttime:string
                >,
    threadid string, 
    hostname string,
    sessionid string
)   
PARTITIONED BY (dt string)
ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.apache.hive.hcatalog.data.JsonSerDe'
with serdeproperties ( 'paths'='requestbegintime, adid, impressionid, referrer, useragent, usercookie, ip' )
LOCATION 's3://myregion.elasticmapreduce/samples/hive-ads/tables/impressions';

After you create the table, run MSCK REPAIR TABLE to load the table and make it queryable from Athena: 

MSCK REPAIR TABLE impressions

OpenX JSON SerDe

In addition to the paths property that defines the columns in the table, the OpenX JSON SerDe has the following optional properties that can be useful for addressing inconsistencies in data.

ignore.malformed.json

Optional. When set to TRUE, lets you skip malformed JSON syntax. The default is FALSE.

dots.in.keys

Optional. The default is FALSE. When set to TRUE, allows the SerDe to replace the dots in key names with underscores. For example, if the JSON dataset contains a key with the name "a.b", you can use this property to define the column name to be "a_b" in Athena. By default (without this SerDe), Athena does not allow dots in column names.

case.insensitive

Optional. The default is TRUE. When set to TRUE, the SerDe converts all uppercase columns to lowercase.

To use case-sensitive key names in your data, use WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ("case.insensitive"= FALSE;). Then, for every key that is not already all lowercase, provide a mapping from the column name to the property name using the following syntax: 

ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.openx.data.jsonserde.JsonSerDe'
WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ("case.insensitive" = "FALSE", "mapping.userid" = "userId")

If you have two keys like URL and Url that are the same when they are in lowercase, an error like the following can occur:

HIVE_CURSOR_ERROR: Row is not a valid JSON Object - JSONException: Duplicate key "url"

To resolve this, set the case.insensitive property to FALSE and map the keys to different names, as in the following example: 

ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.openx.data.jsonserde.JsonSerDe'
WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ("case.insensitive" = "FALSE", "mapping.url1" = "URL", "mapping.url2" = "Url")
mapping

Optional. Maps column names to JSON keys that aren't identical to the column names. The mapping parameter is useful when the JSON data contains keys that are keywords. For example, if you have a JSON key named timestamp, use the following syntax to map the key to a column named ts: 

ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.openx.data.jsonserde.JsonSerDe'
WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ("mapping.ts"= "timestamp")

Like the Hive JSON SerDe, the OpenX JSON SerDe does not allow duplicate keys in map or struct key names.

The following example DDL statement uses the OpenX JSON SerDe to create a table based on the same sample online advertising data used in the example for the Hive JSON SerDe. In the LOCATION clause, replace myregion with the region identifier where you run Athena. 

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE impressions (
    requestbegintime string,
    adid string,
    impressionId string,
    referrer string,
    useragent string,
    usercookie string,
    ip string,
    number string,
    processid string,
    browsercokie string,
    requestendtime string,
    timers struct<
       modellookup:string, 
       requesttime:string>,
    threadid string, 
    hostname string,
    sessionid string
)   PARTITIONED BY (dt string)
ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.openx.data.jsonserde.JsonSerDe'
with serdeproperties ( 'paths'='requestbegintime, adid, impressionid, referrer, useragent, usercookie, ip' )
LOCATION 's3://myregion.elasticmapreduce/samples/hive-ads/tables/impressions';

Example: Deserializing Nested JSON

You can use the JSON SerDes to parse more complex JSON-encoded data. This requires using CREATE TABLE statements that use struct and array elements to represent nested structures.

The following example creates an Athena table from JSON data that has nested structures. To parse JSON-encoded data in Athena, make sure that each JSON document is on its own line, separated by a new line.

This example presumes JSON-encoded data that has the following structure:

{
"DocId": "AWS",
"User": {
        "Id": 1234,
        "Username": "bob1234", 
        "Name": "Bob",
"ShippingAddress": {
"Address1": "123 Main St.",
"Address2": null,
"City": "Seattle",
"State": "WA"
   },
"Orders": [
   {
     "ItemId": 6789,
     "OrderDate": "11/11/2017" 
   },
   {
     "ItemId": 4352,
     "OrderDate": "12/12/2017"
   }
  ]
 }
}

The following CREATE TABLE statement uses the Openx-JsonSerDe with the struct and array collection data types to establish groups of objects. Each JSON document is listed on its own line, separated by a new line. To avoid errors, the data being queried does not include duplicate keys in struct or map key names. 

CREATE external TABLE complex_json (
   docid string,
   `user` struct<
               id:INT,
               username:string,
               name:string,
               shippingaddress:struct<
                                      address1:string,
                                      address2:string,
                                      city:string,
                                      state:string
                                      >,
               orders:array<
                            struct<
                                 itemid:INT,
                                  orderdate:string
                                  >
                              >
               >
   )
ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.openx.data.jsonserde.JsonSerDe'
LOCATION 's3://mybucket/myjsondata/';

Additional Resources

For more information about working with JSON and nested JSON in Athena, see the following resources: