2nd Followup: It turns out that loading a table from a JSON string is more complicated than going from a table to JSON, perhaps for good reason. There does not appear to be a direct inverse to the row_to_json() function, but it wasn't difficult for me to write a PHP program that takes the JSON file I created the other day and converts it back to a series of inserts, recreating the original table.Of course this simple program does NO validation (not that this file needed any), so if the JSON string is not well-formed for any of a number of reasons, or if it is not properly mapped to the table into which the inserts are made, an insert could fail or result in incorrect data.
--Mike Nolan
json_populate_record(base anyelement, from_json json)
json_populate_recordset(base anyelement, from_json json)
Exists in 9.3 too...though if you are going heavy json I'd suggest doing whatever you can to keep up with the recent releases.
David J.