Copy value from one row to another row in PostgreSQL - postgresql

Question

I have a table like this:
id product amount
1 A 6
1 A 8
1 A
1 B 1
1 B
2 C 2
2 C
2 C 4
2 C
2 C
and I need to make it like this:
id product amount
1 A 6
1 A 8
1 A 8
1 B 1
1 B 1
2 C 2
2 C 2
2 C 4
2 C 4
2 C 4
Copy amount by previous non-missing value.
I tried to use lag() function. however, aggregation function lag() is not allowed in UPDATE.
update tableA set amount = lag(amount);
What can I do using PostgreSQL?

Answer 1

You can SELECT what you want to UPDATE, but there is no (easy) way to actually do the UPDATE, because the table fox does not have a primary key (yet).
CREATE TABLE fox (
id integer NOT NULL,
product text NOT NULL,
amount integer
);
To populate the fox with some data.
INSERT INTO fox VALUES
(1, 'A', 6),
(1, 'A', 8),
(1, 'A', NULL),
(1, 'B', 1),
(1, 'B', NULL),
(2, 'C', 2),
(2, 'C', NULL),
(2, 'C', 4),
(2, 'C', NULL),
(2, 'C', NULL),
(3, 'What does the fox say?', 5);
The query.
WITH ranks (rank, id, product, amount) AS (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (), id, product, amount FROM foo
)
SELECT r.id, r.product,
(SELECT amount FROM ranks
WHERE id = r.id AND product = r.product
AND rank < r.rank AND amount IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY amount DESC LIMIT 1
)
FROM ranks r WHERE r.amount IS NULL ORDER BY 1, 2, 3;
Yields the rows which previously had a NULL and now have the appropriate amount.
id | product | amount
----+---------+--------
1 | A | 8
1 | B | 1
2 | C | 2
2 | C | 4
2 | C | 4
But you cannot use this data to update, because rows are still not uniquely identified by (id, product) - which means you cannot write a WHERE condition identifying your rows uniquely. How would the WHERE clause know whether to change the amount to 2 or 4 in the UPDATE? The multiple rows with (id, product) = (2, 'C') are indistinguishable in the WHERE of the UPDATE.
Let's give the fox a primary key.
ALTER TABLE fox ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS pkey serial ;
ALTER TABLE fox ADD PRIMARY KEY (pkey) ;
Now we can identify the rows by the PRIMARY KEY pkey.
WITH nulls AS (
SELECT pkey, id, product
FROM fox
WHERE amount IS NULL
)
SELECT pkey,
id, product, -- you can leave these out in your UPDATE: pkey is UNIQUE
(SELECT amount FROM fox
WHERE id = n.id AND product = n.product
AND n.pkey > pkey AND amount IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY pkey DESC LIMIT 1)
FROM nulls n ORDER BY 1, 2, 3, 4;
to display the changes to be made
pkey | id | product | amount
------+----+---------+--------
3 | 1 | A | 8
5 | 1 | B | 1
7 | 2 | C | 2
9 | 2 | C | 4
10 | 2 | C | 4
And we can use pkey in the UPDATE.
BEGIN TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE ;
WITH nulls AS (
SELECT pkey, id, product
FROM fox
WHERE amount IS NULL
), changes AS (
SELECT pkey,
(SELECT amount FROM fox
WHERE id = n.id AND product = n.product
AND n.pkey > pkey AND amount IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY pkey DESC LIMIT 1)
FROM nulls n
) UPDATE fox f SET amount = c.amount FROM changes c WHERE f.pkey = c.pkey ;
Check the result is okay:
SELECT * FROM fox ORDER BY 1, 2, 3, 4;
And accept using COMMIT or ROLLBACK accordingly.
Alternative to adding a PRIMARY KEY
Every table should always have a primary key.
If you insist not to have one, then you could also compute the rows with their then-not-NULL amount and instead of UPDATEing them, you could INSERT them into your table and then DELETE FROM fox WHERE amount IS NULL remove the rows which had no amount. This way you get around adding a primary key, which is unique. Of course the UPDATE and DELETE are packaged into a TRANSACTION such as not to interfere with other Transactions running concurrently. For example another Transaction adding rows with NULL amount AFTER you have calculated the data to be INSERTed using SELECT and before you DELETE all NULL amounts. You'd miss the concurrently added row with NULL amount in this case (data loss due to concurrency; think ACID).
But a missing primary key will probably bite you later on, anyway.

Answer 2

Without knowing what defines "previous rows" all is a guess. But you can use a anonymous block to do what your want, just make your changes:
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE test_lag AS
SELECT column1 AS id, column2 AS product, column3 AS amount FROM (
VALUES (1, 'A', 6),
(1, 'A', 8),
(1, 'A', NULL),
(1, 'B', 1),
(1, 'B', NULL),
(2, 'C', 2),
(2, 'C', NULL),
(2, 'C', 4),
(2, 'C', NULL),
(2, 'C', NULL)) AS tmp;
DO $$
BEGIN
--Loop until update all null amounts
--Why we need this? It's because PostgreSQL don't supports IGNORE NULLS clause on lag()
LOOP
WITH tmp AS (
SELECT ctid, lag(amount) OVER() AS last_amount FROM test_lag ORDER BY id, product -- You MUST change this ORDER to right columns (What's previous row?)
)
UPDATE test_lag SET amount = tmp.last_amount FROM tmp WHERE test_lag.ctid = tmp.ctid AND amount IS NULL;
IF NOT FOUND THEN
EXIT;
END IF;
END LOOP;
END $$;
SELECT * FROM test_lag ORDER BY id, product, amount;