---
alias: []
description: 'Documentation for the JSON format'
input_format: true
keywords: ['JSON']
output_format: true
slug: /interfaces/formats/JSON
title: 'JSON'
---

| Input | Output | Alias |
|-------|--------|-------|
| ✔     | ✔      |       |

## Description {#description}

The `JSON` format reads and outputs data in the JSON format. 

The `JSON` format returns the following: 

| Parameter                    | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                                |
|------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `meta`                       | Column names and types.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    |
| `data`                       | Data tables                                                                                                                                                                                                                                |
| `rows`                       | The total number of output rows.                                                                                                                                                                                                           |
| `rows_before_limit_at_least` | The lower estimate of the number of rows there would have been without LIMIT. Output only if the query contains LIMIT. This estimate is calculated from the blocks of data processed in the query pipeline before the limit transform, but could then be discarded by the limit transform. If the blocks didn't even reach the limit transform in the query pipeline, they don't participate in the estimation. |
| `statistics`                 | Statistics such as `elapsed`, `rows_read`, `bytes_read`.                                                                                                                                                                                   |
| `totals`                     | Total values (when using WITH TOTALS).                                                                                                                                                                                                     |
| `extremes`                   | Extreme values (when extremes are set to 1).                                                                                                                                                                                               |

The `JSON` type is compatible with JavaScript. To ensure this, some characters are additionally escaped: 
- the slash `/` is escaped as `\/`
- alternative line breaks `U+2028` and `U+2029`, which break some browsers, are escaped as `\uXXXX`. 
- ASCII control characters are escaped: backspace, form feed, line feed, carriage return, and horizontal tab are replaced with `\b`, `\f`, `\n`, `\r`, `\t` , as well as the remaining bytes in the 00-1F range using `\uXXXX` sequences. 
- Invalid UTF-8 sequences are changed to the replacement character � so the output text will consist of valid UTF-8 sequences. 

For compatibility with JavaScript, Int64 and UInt64 integers are enclosed in double quotes by default. 
To remove the quotes, you can set the configuration parameter [`output_format_json_quote_64bit_integers`](/operations/settings/settings-formats.md/#output_format_json_quote_64bit_integers) to `0`.

ClickHouse supports [NULL](/sql-reference/syntax.md), which is displayed as `null` in the JSON output. To enable `+nan`, `-nan`, `+inf`, `-inf` values in output, set the [output_format_json_quote_denormals](/operations/settings/settings-formats.md/#output_format_json_quote_denormals) to `1`.

## Example usage {#example-usage}

Example:

```sql
SELECT SearchPhrase, count() AS c FROM test.hits GROUP BY SearchPhrase WITH TOTALS ORDER BY c DESC LIMIT 5 FORMAT JSON
```

```json
{
        "meta":
        [
                {
                        "name": "num",
                        "type": "Int32"
                },
                {
                        "name": "str",
                        "type": "String"
                },
                {
                        "name": "arr",
                        "type": "Array(UInt8)"
                }
        ],

        "data":
        [
                {
                        "num": 42,
                        "str": "hello",
                        "arr": [0,1]
                },
                {
                        "num": 43,
                        "str": "hello",
                        "arr": [0,1,2]
                },
                {
                        "num": 44,
                        "str": "hello",
                        "arr": [0,1,2,3]
                }
        ],

        "rows": 3,

        "rows_before_limit_at_least": 3,

        "statistics":
        {
                "elapsed": 0.001137687,
                "rows_read": 3,
                "bytes_read": 24
        }
}
```

## Format settings {#format-settings}

For JSON input format, if setting [`input_format_json_validate_types_from_metadata`](/operations/settings/settings-formats.md/#input_format_json_validate_types_from_metadata) is set to `1`,
the types from metadata in input data will be compared with the types of the corresponding columns from the table.

## See also {#see-also}

- [JSONEachRow](/interfaces/formats/JSONEachRow) format
- [output_format_json_array_of_rows](/operations/settings/settings-formats.md/#output_format_json_array_of_rows) setting
