I ran into what I think is a regression in upgrading from 3.35.0 to 3.39.4 but I guess it could be a bugfix depending on how you interpret the docs for json_group_array. I didn't see any mention of json-related changes in the changelog, but I could have missed it.

This minimal example in 3.35.0 and 3.39.4 and produces different results:

create table foo (
  a text,
  b text
);
insert into foo (a,b) values ("a1", "b1"),("a2","b2");
select json_group_array(obj) from
  (select
    rowid as id,
    json_object('a', a, 'b', b) AS obj
  from foo);

Output in 3.35.0:

[{"a":"a1","b":"b1"},{"a":"a2","b":"b2"}]

Output in 3.39.4:

["{\"a\":\"a1\",\"b\":\"b1\"}","{\"a\":\"a2\",\"b\":\"b2\"}"]

Changing the final query column above to be json_group_array(json(obj)) produces the same output in both versions:

select json_group_array(json(obj)) from
  (select
    rowid as id,
    json_object('a', a, 'b', b) AS obj
  from foo);

Yep, thank you!

This is a bug fix. The fix is at

• https://sqlite.org/src/info/bbaf1f2eb1e1637b

Original bug report and discussion at:

• https://sqlite.org/forum/forumpost/3d9caa45cbe38c78