Functions That Search JSON Values 2 rows in set (0.00 sec) (See Indexing a Generated Column to Provide a JSON Column Index, for the statements used to create and populate the table just shown.) This also works with JSON array values, as shown here: mysql>  CREATE TABLE tj10 (a JSON, b INT); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.26 sec) mysql>  INSERT INTO tj10 >  VALUES ("[3,10,5,17,44]", 33), ("[3,10,5,17,[22,44,66]]", 0); Query OK, 1 row affected (0.04 sec) mysql>  SELECT a->"$[4]" FROM tj10; +--------------+ | a->"$[4]" | +--------------+ | 44 | | [22, 44, 66] | +--------------+ 2 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql>  SELECT * FROM tj10 WHERE a->"$[0]" = 3; +------------------------------+------+ | a | b | +------------------------------+------+ | [3, 10, 5, 17, 44] | 33 | | [3, 10, 5, 17, [22, 44, 66]] | 0 | +------------------------------+------+ 2 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql>  SELECT * FROM tj10 WHERE a->"$[4][1]" IS NOT NULL; +------------------------------+------+ | a | b | +------------------------------+------+ | [3, 10, 5, 17, [22, 44, 66]] | 0 | +------------------------------+------+ mysql>  SELECT a->"$[4][1]" FROM tj10; +--------------+ | a->"$[4][1]" | +--------------+ | NULL | | 44 | +--------------+ 2 rows in set (0.00 sec) Nested arrays are supported. An expression using  ->  evaluates as  NULL  if no matching key is found in the target JSON document, as shown here: This is the same behavior as seen in such cases when using  JSON_EXTRACT() : mysql>  SELECT JSON_EXTRACT(a, "$[4][1]") FROM tj10; +----------------------------+ | JSON_EXTRACT(a, "$[4][1]") | +----------------------------+ | NULL | | 44 | +----------------------------+ 2 rows in set (0.00 sec) 2351