Why does json_agg fail with error "function json_agg(record) does not exist"?

Question

With postgresql version 9.2, I'm trying to run a query that selects certain columns to build a json object. Here's the query, which I derived from this question:

select
  a.id
  , json_agg((SELECT x FROM (SELECT b.fieldA) AS x)) AS item
from a join b on a.id = b.foreign_key
limit 10

When I run this, I get an error that's rather hard to parse.

ERROR: function json_agg(record) does not exist Hint: No function matches the given name and argument types. You might need to add explicit type casts.

, json_agg((SELECT x FROM (SELECT b.fieldA) AS x)) AS item

It seems as though the complaint is that json_agg is not receiving the right sort of input, but I don't understand why.

When I run the same query without the json_agg, i.e. just with the sub-select expression, I get a column with the value of b.fieldA inside parentheses. I'm not sure what the parens indicate in terms of a data type, but I could see that perhaps json_agg is only getting the values an so doesn't know how to supply the property name.

Can anyone explain where I've gone wrong?

Answer 1

json_agg does not exist in postgres version 9.2 (which is now at end-of-life). It was introduced in version 9.3.

The HINT does seem to be slightly inappropriate. If no function by that name exists, then no amount of casting the arguments can work.