9.16. JSON 函式及運算子
本節描述的內容為:
用於處理和建立 JSON 資料的函數和運算子
SQL/JSON 路徑語言
要了解有關 SQL/JSON 標準的更多資訊,請參閱 [sqltr-19075-6]。有關於 PostgreSQL 支援的 JSON 型別的詳細資訊,請參閱第 8.14 節。
9.16.1. Processing and Creating JSON Data
Table 9.44 列出了可用於 JSON 資料型別的運算子(請參閱第 8.14 節)。
Table 9.44. json
and jsonb
Operators
json
and jsonb
OperatorsOperator | Right Operand Type | Return type | Description | Example | Example Result |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Get JSON array element (indexed from zero, negative integers count from the end) |
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| Get JSON object field by key |
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| Get JSON array element as |
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| Get JSON object field as |
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| Get JSON object at the specified path |
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| Get JSON object at the specified path as |
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這些運算子都有 json 和 jsonb 型別共用的變形。欄位/元素/路徑提取運算子回傳與其左側輸入相同的類型(json 或 jsonb),但指定為回傳 text 的運算符除外,這些運算子將結果強制轉換為 text。如果 JSON 輸入的結構不符合要求,則欄位/元素/路徑提取運算子將回傳 NULL 而不會失敗。例如,如果不存在這樣的元素。接受整數 JSON 陣列索引的欄位/元素/路徑提取運算子均支援表示從陣列末尾開始的負數索引值。
The standard comparison operators shown in Table 9.1 are available for jsonb
, but not for json
. They follow the ordering rules for B-tree operations outlined at Section 8.14.4.
Some further operators also exist only for jsonb
, as shown in Table 9.45. Many of these operators can be indexed by jsonb
operator classes. For a full description of jsonb
containment and existence semantics, see Section 8.14.3. Section 8.14.4 describes how these operators can be used to effectively index jsonb
data.
Table 9.45. Additional jsonb
Operators
jsonb
OperatorsOperator | Right Operand Type | Description | Example |
---|---|---|---|
|
| Does the left JSON value contain the right JSON path/value entries at the top level? |
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| Are the left JSON path/value entries contained at the top level within the right JSON value? |
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| Does the string exist as a top-level key within the JSON value? |
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| Do any of these array strings exist as top-level keys? |
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| Do all of these array strings exist as top-level keys? |
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| Concatenate two |
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| Delete key/value pair or string element from left operand. Key/value pairs are matched based on their key value. |
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| Delete multiple key/value pairs or string elements from left operand. Key/value pairs are matched based on their key value. |
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| Delete the array element with specified index (Negative integers count from the end). Throws an error if top level container is not an array. |
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| Delete the field or element with specified path (for JSON arrays, negative integers count from the end) |
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| Does JSON path return any item for the specified JSON value? |
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| Returns the result of JSON path predicate check for the specified JSON value. Only the first item of the result is taken into account. If the result is not Boolean, then |
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Note
The ||
operator concatenates the elements at the top level of each of its operands. It does not operate recursively. For example, if both operands are objects with a common key field name, the value of the field in the result will just be the value from the right hand operand.
Note
The @?
and @@
operators suppress the following errors: lacking object field or array element, unexpected JSON item type, and numeric errors. This behavior might be helpful while searching over JSON document collections of varying structure.
Table 9.46 shows the functions that are available for creating json
and jsonb
values. (There are no equivalent functions for jsonb
, of the row_to_json
and array_to_json
functions. However, the to_jsonb
function supplies much the same functionality as these functions would.)
Table 9.46. JSON Creation Functions
Function | Description | Example | Example Result |
---|---|---|---|
| Returns the value as |
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| Returns the array as a JSON array. A PostgreSQL multidimensional array becomes a JSON array of arrays. Line feeds will be added between dimension-1 elements if |
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| Returns the row as a JSON object. Line feeds will be added between level-1 elements if |
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| Builds a possibly-heterogeneously-typed JSON array out of a variadic argument list. |
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| Builds a JSON object out of a variadic argument list. By convention, the argument list consists of alternating keys and values. |
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| Builds a JSON object out of a text array. The array must have either exactly one dimension with an even number of members, in which case they are taken as alternating key/value pairs, or two dimensions such that each inner array has exactly two elements, which are taken as a key/value pair. |
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| This form of |
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Note
array_to_json
and row_to_json
have the same behavior as to_json
except for offering a pretty-printing option. The behavior described for to_json
likewise applies to each individual value converted by the other JSON creation functions.
Note
The hstore extension has a cast from hstore
to json
, so that hstore
values converted via the JSON creation functions will be represented as JSON objects, not as primitive string values.
Table 9.47 shows the functions that are available for processing json
and jsonb
values.
Table 9.47. JSON Processing Functions
Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Example Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
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| Returns the number of elements in the outermost JSON array. |
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| Expands the outermost JSON object into a set of key/value pairs. |
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| Expands the outermost JSON object into a set of key/value pairs. The returned values will be of type |
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| Returns JSON value pointed to by |
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| Returns JSON value pointed to by |
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| Returns set of keys in the outermost JSON object. |
| |
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| Expands the object in |
| |
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| Expands the outermost array of objects in |
| |
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| Expands a JSON array to a set of JSON values. |
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| Expands a JSON array to a set of |
| |
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| Returns the type of the outermost JSON value as a text string. Possible types are |
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| Builds an arbitrary record from a JSON object (see note below). As with all functions returning |
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| Builds an arbitrary set of records from a JSON array of objects (see note below). As with all functions returning |
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| Returns |
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| Returns |
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| Returns |
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| Returns |
| |
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| Checks whether JSON path returns any item for the specified JSON value. |
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| Returns the result of JSON path predicate check for the specified JSON value. Only the first item of the result is taken into account. If the result is not Boolean, then |
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| Gets all JSON items returned by JSON path for the specified JSON value. |
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| Gets all JSON items returned by JSON path for the specified JSON value and wraps result into an array. |
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| Gets the first JSON item returned by JSON path for the specified JSON value. Returns |
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Note
Many of these functions and operators will convert Unicode escapes in JSON strings to the appropriate single character. This is a non-issue if the input is type jsonb
, because the conversion was already done; but for json
input, this may result in throwing an error, as noted in Section 8.14.
Note
The functions json[b]_populate_record
, json[b]_populate_recordset
, json[b]_to_record
and json[b]_to_recordset
operate on a JSON object, or array of objects, and extract the values associated with keys whose names match column names of the output row type. Object fields that do not correspond to any output column name are ignored, and output columns that do not match any object field will be filled with nulls. To convert a JSON value to the SQL type of an output column, the following rules are applied in sequence:
A JSON null value is converted to a SQL null in all cases.
If the output column is of type
json
orjsonb
, the JSON value is just reproduced exactly.If the output column is a composite (row) type, and the JSON value is a JSON object, the fields of the object are converted to columns of the output row type by recursive application of these rules.
Likewise, if the output column is an array type and the JSON value is a JSON array, the elements of the JSON array are converted to elements of the output array by recursive application of these rules.
Otherwise, if the JSON value is a string literal, the contents of the string are fed to the input conversion function for the column's data type.
Otherwise, the ordinary text representation of the JSON value is fed to the input conversion function for the column's data type.
While the examples for these functions use constants, the typical use would be to reference a table in the FROM
clause and use one of its json
or jsonb
columns as an argument to the function. Extracted key values can then be referenced in other parts of the query, like WHERE
clauses and target lists. Extracting multiple values in this way can improve performance over extracting them separately with per-key operators.
Note
All the items of the path
parameter of jsonb_set
as well as jsonb_insert
except the last item must be present in the target
. If create_missing
is false, all items of the path
parameter of jsonb_set
must be present. If these conditions are not met the target
is returned unchanged.
If the last path item is an object key, it will be created if it is absent and given the new value. If the last path item is an array index, if it is positive the item to set is found by counting from the left, and if negative by counting from the right - -1
designates the rightmost element, and so on. If the item is out of the range -array_length .. array_length -1, and create_missing is true, the new value is added at the beginning of the array if the item is negative, and at the end of the array if it is positive.
Note
The json_typeof
function's null
return value should not be confused with a SQL NULL. While calling json_typeof('null'::json)
will return null
, calling json_typeof(NULL::json)
will return a SQL NULL.
Note
If the argument to json_strip_nulls
contains duplicate field names in any object, the result could be semantically somewhat different, depending on the order in which they occur. This is not an issue for jsonb_strip_nulls
since jsonb
values never have duplicate object field names.
Note
The jsonb_path_exists
, jsonb_path_match
, jsonb_path_query
, jsonb_path_query_array
, and jsonb_path_query_first
functions have optional vars
and silent
arguments.
If the vars
argument is specified, it provides an object containing named variables to be substituted into a jsonpath
expression.
If the silent
argument is specified and has the true
value, these functions suppress the same errors as the @?
and @@
operators.
See also Section 9.20 for the aggregate function json_agg
which aggregates record values as JSON, and the aggregate function json_object_agg
which aggregates pairs of values into a JSON object, and their jsonb
equivalents, jsonb_agg
and jsonb_object_agg
.
9.16.2. The SQL/JSON Path Language
SQL/JSON path expressions specify the items to be retrieved from the JSON data, similar to XPath expressions used for SQL access to XML. In PostgreSQL, path expressions are implemented as the jsonpath
data type and can use any elements described in Section 8.14.6.
JSON query functions and operators pass the provided path expression to the path engine for evaluation. If the expression matches the queried JSON data, the corresponding SQL/JSON item is returned. Path expressions are written in the SQL/JSON path language and can also include arithmetic expressions and functions. Query functions treat the provided expression as a text string, so it must be enclosed in single quotes.
A path expression consists of a sequence of elements allowed by the jsonpath
data type. The path expression is evaluated from left to right, but you can use parentheses to change the order of operations. If the evaluation is successful, a sequence of SQL/JSON items (SQL/JSON sequence) is produced, and the evaluation result is returned to the JSON query function that completes the specified computation.
To refer to the JSON data to be queried (the context item), use the $
sign in the path expression. It can be followed by one or more accessor operators, which go down the JSON structure level by level to retrieve the content of context item. Each operator that follows deals with the result of the previous evaluation step.
For example, suppose you have some JSON data from a GPS tracker that you would like to parse, such as:
To retrieve the available track segments, you need to use the .
key
accessor operator for all the preceding JSON objects:
If the item to retrieve is an element of an array, you have to unnest this array using the [*]
operator. For example, the following path will return location coordinates for all the available track segments:
To return the coordinates of the first segment only, you can specify the corresponding subscript in the []
accessor operator. Note that the SQL/JSON arrays are 0-relative:
The result of each path evaluation step can be processed by one or more jsonpath
operators and methods listed in Section 9.15.2.3. Each method name must be preceded by a dot. For example, you can get an array size:
For more examples of using jsonpath
operators and methods within path expressions, see Section 9.15.2.3.
When defining the path, you can also use one or more filter expressions that work similar to the WHERE
clause in SQL. A filter expression begins with a question mark and provides a condition in parentheses:
Filter expressions must be specified right after the path evaluation step to which they are applied. The result of this step is filtered to include only those items that satisfy the provided condition. SQL/JSON defines three-valued logic, so the condition can be true
, false
, or unknown
. The unknown
value plays the same role as SQL NULL
and can be tested for with the is unknown
predicate. Further path evaluation steps use only those items for which filter expressions return true
.
Functions and operators that can be used in filter expressions are listed in Table 9.49. The path evaluation result to be filtered is denoted by the @
variable. To refer to a JSON element stored at a lower nesting level, add one or more accessor operators after @
.
Suppose you would like to retrieve all heart rate values higher than 130. You can achieve this using the following expression:
To get the start time of segments with such values instead, you have to filter out irrelevant segments before returning the start time, so the filter expression is applied to the previous step, and the path used in the condition is different:
You can use several filter expressions on the same nesting level, if required. For example, the following expression selects all segments that contain locations with relevant coordinates and high heart rate values:
Using filter expressions at different nesting levels is also allowed. The following example first filters all segments by location, and then returns high heart rate values for these segments, if available:
You can also nest filter expressions within each other:
This expression returns the size of the track if it contains any segments with high heart rate values, or an empty sequence otherwise.
PostgreSQL's implementation of SQL/JSON path language has the following deviations from the SQL/JSON standard:
.datetime()
item method is not implemented yet mainly because immutablejsonpath
functions and operators cannot reference session timezone, which is used in some datetime operations. Datetime support will be added tojsonpath
in future versions of PostgreSQL.A path expression can be a Boolean predicate, although the SQL/JSON standard allows predicates only in filters. This is necessary for implementation of the
@@
operator. For example, the followingjsonpath
expression is valid in PostgreSQL:There are minor differences in the interpretation of regular expression patterns used in
like_regex
filters, as described in Section 9.15.2.2.
9.16.2.1. Strict And Lax Modes
When you query JSON data, the path expression may not match the actual JSON data structure. An attempt to access a non-existent member of an object or element of an array results in a structural error. SQL/JSON path expressions have two modes of handling structural errors:
lax (default) — the path engine implicitly adapts the queried data to the specified path. Any remaining structural errors are suppressed and converted to empty SQL/JSON sequences.
strict — if a structural error occurs, an error is raised.
The lax mode facilitates matching of a JSON document structure and path expression if the JSON data does not conform to the expected schema. If an operand does not match the requirements of a particular operation, it can be automatically wrapped as an SQL/JSON array or unwrapped by converting its elements into an SQL/JSON sequence before performing this operation. Besides, comparison operators automatically unwrap their operands in the lax mode, so you can compare SQL/JSON arrays out-of-the-box. An array of size 1 is considered equal to its sole element. Automatic unwrapping is not performed only when:
The path expression contains
type()
orsize()
methods that return the type and the number of elements in the array, respectively.The queried JSON data contain nested arrays. In this case, only the outermost array is unwrapped, while all the inner arrays remain unchanged. Thus, implicit unwrapping can only go one level down within each path evaluation step.
For example, when querying the GPS data listed above, you can abstract from the fact that it stores an array of segments when using the lax mode:
In the strict mode, the specified path must exactly match the structure of the queried JSON document to return an SQL/JSON item, so using this path expression will cause an error. To get the same result as in the lax mode, you have to explicitly unwrap the segments
array:
9.16.2.2. Regular Expressions
SQL/JSON path expressions allow matching text to a regular expression with the like_regex
filter. For example, the following SQL/JSON path query would case-insensitively match all strings in an array that start with an English vowel:
The optional flag
string may include one or more of the characters i
for case-insensitive match, m
to allow ^
and $
to match at newlines, s
to allow .
to match a newline, and q
to quote the whole pattern (reducing the behavior to a simple substring match).
The SQL/JSON standard borrows its definition for regular expressions from the LIKE_REGEX
operator, which in turn uses the XQuery standard. PostgreSQL does not currently support the LIKE_REGEX
operator. Therefore, the like_regex
filter is implemented using the POSIX regular expression engine described in Section 9.7.3. This leads to various minor discrepancies from standard SQL/JSON behavior, which are cataloged in Section 9.7.3.8. Note, however, that the flag-letter incompatibilities described there do not apply to SQL/JSON, as it translates the XQuery flag letters to match what the POSIX engine expects.
Keep in mind that the pattern argument of like_regex
is a JSON path string literal, written according to the rules given in Section 8.14.6. This means in particular that any backslashes you want to use in the regular expression must be doubled. For example, to match strings that contain only digits:
9.16.2.3. SQL/JSON Path Operators And Methods
Table 9.48 shows the operators and methods available in jsonpath
. Table 9.49 shows the available filter expression elements.
Table 9.48. jsonpath
Operators and Methods
jsonpath
Operators and MethodsOperator/Method | Description | Example JSON | Example Query | Result |
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| Plus operator that iterates over the SQL/JSON sequence |
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| Minus operator that iterates over the SQL/JSON sequence |
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| Addition |
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| Subtraction |
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| Multiplication |
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| Division |
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| Modulus |
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| Type of the SQL/JSON item |
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| Size of the SQL/JSON item |
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| Approximate floating-point number converted from an SQL/JSON number or a string |
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| Nearest integer greater than or equal to the SQL/JSON number |
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| Nearest integer less than or equal to the SQL/JSON number |
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| Absolute value of the SQL/JSON number |
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| Sequence of object's key-value pairs represented as array of items containing three fields ( |
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Table 9.49. jsonpath
Filter Expression Elements
jsonpath
Filter Expression ElementsValue/Predicate | Description | Example JSON | Example Query | Result |
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| Equality operator |
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| Non-equality operator |
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| Non-equality operator (same as |
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| Less-than operator |
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| Less-than-or-equal-to operator |
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| Greater-than operator |
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| Greater-than-or-equal-to operator |
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| Value used to perform comparison with JSON |
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| Value used to perform comparison with JSON |
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| Value used to perform comparison with JSON |
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| Boolean AND |
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| Boolean OR |
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| Boolean NOT |
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| Tests whether the first operand matches the regular expression given by the second operand, optionally with modifications described by a string of |
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| Tests whether the second operand is an initial substring of the first operand |
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| Tests whether a path expression matches at least one SQL/JSON item |
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| Tests whether a Boolean condition is |
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