Regular expression search in table in PostgreSql - postgresql

Question

I am trying to make regular expression search on a table in PostgreSql . But i am not able to find right syntax to do so using single statement .
I don't know if i create index column will i be able to do search based on regular expression or not .could any one help me please
The query is like this
SELECT *
FROM flight_info
where to_tsvector('english',event_id || ' ' || type || ' ' || category || ' ' || number || ' '|| make || ' '|| model ) ## to_tsquery('Incident');
Here Incident is matched exactly based on text But I need to make search base on regular expression like how we do using LIKE .
Or Using like clause on all the column is the only way ?
Or is there a way to give like clause that applies to many columns in query

Answer 1

You will not be able to mix Regex and full text search. It is not possible to use a Regex within to_tsquery()
You can use regexp_matches() instead:
SELECT regexp_matches('foobarbequebaz', '(bar)(beque)');
regexp_matches
----------------
{bar,beque}
(1 row)
SELECT regexp_matches('foobarbequebazilbarfbonk', '(b[^b]+)(b[^b]+)', 'g');
regexp_matches
----------------
{bar,beque}
{bazil,barf}
(2 rows)
More info at https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/functions-matching.html
Update:
To use a Regex in whe WHERE clause, use the ~ operator:
-- Sample schema
CREATE TABLE sample_table (
id serial,
col1 text,
col2 text,
col3 text
);
INSERT INTO sample_table (col1, col2, col3) VALUES ('this', 'is', 'foobarbequebazilbarfbonk');
INSERT INTO sample_table (col1, col2, col3) VALUES ('apple foobarbequebazequeb', 'rocky', 'sunny');
INSERT INTO sample_table (col1, col2, col3) VALUES ('not', 'a', 'match');
-- Query
SELECT *
FROM sample_table
WHERE (col1 || col2 || col3) ~ '(bar)(beque)';
->
id | col1 | col2 | col3
----+---------------------------+-------+--------------------------
1 | this | is | foobarbequebazilbarfbonk
2 | apple foobarbequebazequeb | rocky | sunny
(2 rows)
You can use ~* instead to make it case insensitive.
More info: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions-matching.html