MySQL 5.7 JSON Data Type

Phalcon ORM is designed to be DB independent, so I doubt there is any plan to support it...

I don't know the specifics of the new JSON type, but maybe you could implement the desired functionality by using a dialect class: https://github.com/phalcon/incubator/blob/master/Library/Phalcon/Db/Dialect/MysqlExtended.php

Then register the class in the db service:

$di->set('db', function(){)
    // ...
    $db->setDialect(new MysqlExtended);
    return $db;
});

Thanks for your response. I've added the JSON_EXTRACT function as a custom dialect. When I run the following, I don't get an error, but just an empty array. I would have expected an error at least. Any insight at all is much appreciated?

$mysqlSettings['host'] = 'xxx';
$mysqlSettings['port'] = 'xxx';
$mysqlSettings['password'] = 'xxx'
$mysqlSettings['username'] = 'xxx';
$mysqlSettings['dbname'] = 'xxx';

$mysqlSettings['options'] = [
    \PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES     => false,
    \PDO::ATTR_STRINGIFY_FETCHES    => false,
    \PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE              => \PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
];

$dialect = new \Phalcon\Db\Dialect\MySQL();
$dialect->registerCustomFunction(
    'JSON_EXTRACT',
    function($dialect, $expression) {
        $arguments = $expression['arguments'];
        return sprintf(
            "JSON_EXTRACT(%s, %s)",
            $dialect->getSqlExpression($arguments[0]),
            $dialect->getSqlExpression($arguments[1])
        );
    }
);
$mysqlSettings['dialectClass'] = $dialect;

$db = new \Phalcon\Db\Adapter\Pdo\Mysql($mysqlSettings);
print_r($db->fetchAll("SELECT JSON_EXTRACT('[10, 20, [30, 40]]', '$[1]');")); // from mysql docs