Breaking changes in node-red-node-mysql dependency

Current Behavior

node-red-node-mysql returns parsed JSON instead of string when column contains JSON-formatted text

I noticed this issue after rebuilding my Node-RED Docker container. My application had been working correctly, but after recreating the container and reinstalling dependencies, the node-red-node-mysql node started returning different data for the same query, despite using the same version of the Node-RED MySQL node.

Specifically, when a database column contains JSON data stored as a string, the node now returns a parsed JavaScript object instead of the original string value. This broke parts of my existing flow that expected the column value to remain a string.

The behavior appears to be related to a change in the mysql2 dependency. While investigating, I found that mysql2 introduced a breaking change regarding JSON handling, apparently: jsonStrings: true config option should be active

Related issue:
https://github.com/sidorares/node-mysql2/issues/4402

Expected Behavior

node-red-node-mysql returns data from a column/table with no parsing

Steps To Reproduce

Perform a Select of a column that contains a stringified json

Environment

• Node-RED version: 5.5.0
• Node.js version: 24

Start by reproducing a SELECT against a column containing stringified JSON in node-red-node-mysql with the reported Node-RED and Node.js versions. Then inspect the node-red-node-mysql package and its mysql2 dependency configuration; done means the column is returned as its original string without changing other query results.