What does result_options::value do in json_query()?

[Destroy666x]

It's either not documented at all or I missed something somewhere. The ambiguous name doesn't help either.
https://github.com/danielaparker/jsoncons/blob/master/doc/ref/jsonpath/result_options.md - no descriptions. https://github.com/danielaparker/jsoncons/blob/master/doc/ref/jsonpath/json_path.md - one commented out example without info. Nothing in examples either. Anything else I missed?

I was hoping it would return pure value, e.g. Something instead of ["Something"]. As a side question, is there any helper in this lib to achieve such results for single items? Not too hard to check for 1 item and extract it with own code, just wondering if there's something even simplier, as some other implementations in other langs have such possibilities with either [0] or function params such as unwrap.

[danielaparker]

Nothing :-)

result_options is a bitmask type, result_options::value is 0, so or-ing it with any other options has no effect. By itself, result_options::value is the same as result_options{}, which are the default options (with none set.)

result_options::value was left in for backwards compatibility from the time when we had two enum options: value and path. value was always the default - return a list of JSON values. path could be chosen to select a list of normalized paths instead.

jsoncons jsonpath, following the original Goessner JSONPath, has always returned a list of values (or normalized paths.) Today most implementations do that, with Jayway JSONPath being a notable exception. But even Jayway added an option for returning a list.

[Destroy666x]

Oh ok, thanks. I guess I'm more used to empties/optionals in such cases.

So there's no in-build optional way to return an "unwrapped" value?

[danielaparker]

No, we only support returning a collection of selected values.

You may want to check our jmespath extension, JMESPath evaluates to a single value, JSON null if no value is selected.

Anyway, thanks for the reminder that result_options::value still exists, we really should deprecate it, as it serves no purpose.