...It seems like you want basically the same thing TO_JSON does...

Well ultimately the goal is to turn the result into JSON data. After I have obtained the raw data structure I need to jsonify it so I the client app can receive it.

...couple helpers...

Could you give some links so I can have a look what kind of helpers you are referring to?

...in conjunction with a JSON View in web apps...

Are these JSON Views defined in the database? I basically decided to start using ORM so I keep all the logic inside the app and there would be no need to do anything in the database to keep it as simple as possible. E.g. Let's say I have a user table that contains a relation to user groups and another relation to permissions, then what you are suggesting, I would need to write different views for each type of output (>=4 views)? What I am looking for is so that I don't have to do that, pseudo code for each variant (outputting raw Perl array or hash/JSON) are:

users->relation->groups,
user->relation->groups,
users->relation->permissions and
user->relation->permissions
(And if possible even using a filter:)
user->relation->permissions->(name EQ 'Can add photo')
[download]

That said however I may be looking at this the wrong way. Maybe JSON Views are the 'preferred' way to do it? In that case I would definitively like to know more about it. So in the mean while maybe you can also provide some links (Perl modules?) that deal with that topic?

...flattening to serializing...

I find those terms always confusing. I basically just want to get only the table column names and the data it contains and turn that into JSON.

...so I can't try today...

No worries, things don't have to be solved in one day. Any help is appreciated.