Parsing: Flat JSON - Field Value Pairs

Dalton_Ruer · Nov 4, 2025 12:40:14 PM

The image depicts the simplest of JSON structures, a flat list of field and value pairs. Your eyes can easily parse the data, so within a second if I asked you what the outlaw's name was, you would respond with "Billy the Byte." Because instinctively, and without instruction from me, you determined that "outlaw_name" and "Billy the Byte" went together as a PAIR.

JsonGet()

Qlik Sense provides a very easy to understand function called JsonGet that does exactly the same thing that your eyes did. You simply hand it the JSON Block your JSON is in, and tell it the field name you want to parse out of the structure, and it "gets" the value that is paired with the field name you gave it.

Let's assume that the JSON structure is loaded into a field called JSON_Block in a table called Flat, the following code would parse this unstructured textual JSON block into structural field values that you can utilize like you do any of the other 93,302,203 disparate sources you utilize in Qlik Sense every day.

Practice

If you are anything like me you don't like to assume anything, and you are a visual or experiential learner. So, go ahead and download the attached WildDataFrontier.qvf that is attached, upload it to your environment and open the load script.

{ Notice there are multiple sections. Each of them will pertain to a separate article and for this article the section named "1 - Flat JSON: Key-Value Pairs" is the one you want to have at the top of your script. }

Each section will begin with a common pattern. I will show you the prettified version of the JSON structure. Meaning it's indented, and thus easy to read. Then I will remove the line feeds so that the JSON structure being covered is a single line that we deal with as a single string for transformation within Qlik Sense. That single text/block is what API's will return or what you will read out of textual fields that contain JSON blocks from RDMBS systems.

For your learning, simply modify any/all of the field names, modify the JsonGet transformations and then load the data.

Preview

As you go through your changes, the easiest thing to do is visualize the Preview at the bottom of the load editor.

That way you can see what the flat JSON structure/text block looks like:

As well as seeing how the Information is parsed with that simple JsonGet statement:

Big Picture

This post is part of a series aimed at ensuring you have the tools needed to Tame with Wild West Data Frontier, I mean Tame the Wild JSON Data Frontier you may be facing.

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