Why are the order changed when updating a document?

SQL++
1

$query = CouchbaseN1qlQuery::fromString(“UPDATE bucket SET active = ‘no’”);
$result = $bucket->query($query);

Before I updated the document it looked like this:

{
myfield": “no”,
“active”: “yes”
}

After update of active from yes to no it looks like this:

{
“active”: “no”,
myfield": “no”
}

Why are couchbase changing the order in the document?

2

The important thing here is that JSON objects are inherently un-ordered. From RFC 7159:

An object is an unordered collection of zero or more name/value
pairs, where a name is a string and a value is a string, number,
boolean, null, object, or array.

An array is an ordered sequence of zero or more values.

As the fields in the object are keyed, it shouldn’t matter what order they’re in - my_doc['my_field'] is always going to evaluate to that field regardless of the apparent ordering. If ordering is important within a field, then it sounds like an array is more what you’re looking for.

3

Couchbase usually returns documents with the field names in alphabetical order. I’m most familiar with N1QL queries, where this ordering is the result of the JSON marshalling/unmarshalling library involved in processing the documents, but it also has a positive effect in making it easier to find fields when looking through the result set.

And as @JFlath notes, the order doesn’t change the meaning.

4

Ok, thanks JFlath and eben for clarifying that.