Postgres Syntax requiring extra ' ' and "" around things - postgresql

So I am reading tutorial online and I am having a weird issue with my database when doing normal queries. So I see the following does not work:
select * from DBS
ERROR: relation "dbs" does not exist
but This works:
select * from "DBS"
When I do this it fails:
select name from "DBS"
ERROR: column "name" does not exist
but this works but doesnt actually return the correct information (it just has name for every row:
select 'name' from "DBS"
name
name
name
Is there some setting on Postgres causing this to happen?
Postgres 9.4.5 (On RDS).
select 'NAME' from "DBS";
?column?
----------
NAME
NAME
NAME
(3 rows)
When I look at select * from "DBS";
NAME
----------
default
matt
matt2

You need to specify the quotes around the table identifier, because the table uses capital letters and was created using quotes.
postgres has some distinctive behavior re: quoting
select 'name' from "DBS"
You are simply selecting the string literal 'name' once for each row in your table.

Postgres is a little unique in that it folds everything to lowercase unless you use " quotes. I suspect you created your database using pgadmin. If you create a database in pgadmin using UPPER case it will create it with UPPER case and then you will be required to use " around the name to access it. Candidly I'd rename the db to lower case and get rid of the quotes, your life will be a lot easier.

Related

Postgres Copy csv to table sql [duplicate]

I'm trying to run the following PHP script to do a simple database query:
$db_host = "localhost";
$db_name = "showfinder";
$username = "user";
$password = "password";
$dbconn = pg_connect("host=$db_host dbname=$db_name user=$username password=$password")
or die('Could not connect: ' . pg_last_error());
$query = 'SELECT * FROM sf_bands LIMIT 10';
$result = pg_query($query) or die('Query failed: ' . pg_last_error());
This produces the following error:
Query failed: ERROR: relation "sf_bands" does not exist
In all the examples I can find where someone gets an error stating the relation does not exist, it's because they use uppercase letters in their table name. My table name does not have uppercase letters. Is there a way to query my table without including the database name, i.e. showfinder.sf_bands?
From what I've read, this error means that you're not referencing the table name correctly. One common reason is that the table is defined with a mixed-case spelling, and you're trying to query it with all lower-case.
In other words, the following fails:
CREATE TABLE "SF_Bands" ( ... );
SELECT * FROM sf_bands; -- ERROR!
Use double-quotes to delimit identifiers so you can use the specific mixed-case spelling as the table is defined.
SELECT * FROM "SF_Bands";
Re your comment, you can add a schema to the "search_path" so that when you reference a table name without qualifying its schema, the query will match that table name by checked each schema in order. Just like PATH in the shell or include_path in PHP, etc. You can check your current schema search path:
SHOW search_path
"$user",public
You can change your schema search path:
SET search_path TO showfinder,public;
See also http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/ddl-schemas.html
I had problems with this and this is the story (sad but true) :
If your table name is all lower case like : accounts
you can use: select * from AcCounTs and it will work fine
If your table name is all lower case like : accounts
The following will fail:
select * from "AcCounTs"
If your table name is mixed case like : Accounts
The following will fail:
select * from accounts
If your table name is mixed case like : Accounts
The following will work OK:
select * from "Accounts"
I dont like remembering useless stuff like this but you have to ;)
Postgres process query different from other RDMS. Put schema name in double quote before your table name like this, "SCHEMA_NAME"."SF_Bands"
Put the dbname parameter in your connection string. It works for me while everything else failed.
Also when doing the select, specify the your_schema.your_table like this:
select * from my_schema.your_table
If a table name contains underscores or upper case, you need to surround it in double-quotes.
SELECT * from "Table_Name";
I had a similar problem on OSX but tried to play around with double and single quotes. For your case, you could try something like this
$query = 'SELECT * FROM "sf_bands"'; // NOTE: double quotes on "sf_Bands"
This is realy helpfull
SET search_path TO schema,public;
I digged this issues more, and found out about how to set this "search_path" by defoult for a new user in current database.
Open DataBase Properties then open Sheet "Variables"
and simply add this variable for your user with actual value.
So now your user will get this schema_name by defoult and you could use tableName without schemaName.
You must write schema name and table name in qutotation mark. As below:
select * from "schemaName"."tableName";
I had the same issue as above and I am using PostgreSQL 10.5.
I tried everything as above but nothing seems to be working.
Then I closed the pgadmin and opened a session for the PSQL terminal.
Logged into the PSQL and connected to the database and schema respectively :
\c <DATABASE_NAME>;
set search_path to <SCHEMA_NAME>;
Then, restarted the pgadmin console and then I was able to work without issue in the query-tool of the pagadmin.
For me the problem was, that I had used a query to that particular table while Django was initialized. Of course it will then throw an error, because those tables did not exist. In my case, it was a get_or_create method within a admin.py file, that was executed whenever the software ran any kind of operation (in this case the migration). Hope that helps someone.
In addition to Bill Karwin's answer =>
Yes, you should surround the table name with double quotes. However, be aware that most probably php will not allow you to just write simply:
$query = "SELECT * FROM "SF_Bands"";
Instead, you should use single quotes while surrounding the query as sav said.
$query = 'SELECT * FROM "SF_Bands"';
You have to add the schema first e.g.
SELECT * FROM place.user_place;
If you don't want to add that in all queries then try this:
SET search_path TO place;
Now it will works:
SELECT * FROM user_place;
Easiest workaround is Just change the table name and all column names to lowercase and your issue will be resolved.
For example:
Change Table_Name to table_name and
Change ColumnName to columnname
It might be silly for a few, but in my case - once I created the table I could able to query the table on the same session, but if I relogin with new session table does not exits.
Then I used commit just after creating the table and now I could able to find and query the table in the new session as well. Like this:
select * from my_schema.my_tbl;
Hope this would help a few.
Make sure that Table name doesn't contain any trailing whitespaces
Try this: SCHEMA_NAME.TABLE_NAME
I'd suggest checking if you run the migrations or if the table exists in the database.
I tried every good answer ( upvote > 10) but not works.
I met this problem in pgAdmin4.
so my solution is quite simple:
find the target table / scheme.
mouse right click, and click: query-tool
in this new query tool window, you can run your SQL without specifying set search_path to <SCHEMA_NAME>;
you can see the result:

Pgadmin is not able to read the column names due to header in column name [duplicate]

I'm writing a Java application to automatically build and run SQL queries. For many tables my code works fine but on a certain table it gets stuck by throwing the following exception:
Exception in thread "main" org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: ERROR: column "continent" does not exist
Hint: Perhaps you meant to reference the column "countries.Continent".
Position: 8
The query that has been run is the following:
SELECT Continent
FROM network.countries
WHERE Continent IS NOT NULL
AND Continent <> ''
LIMIT 5
This essentially returns 5 non-empty values from the column.
I don't understand why I'm getting the "column does not exist" error when it clearly does in pgAdmin 4. I can see that there is a schema with the name Network which contains the table countries and that table has a column called Continent just as expected.
Since all column, schema and table names are retrieved by the application itself I don't think there has been a spelling or semantical error so why does PostgreSQL cause problems regardless? Running the query in pgAdmin4 nor using the suggested countries.Continent is working.
My PostgreSQL version is the newest as of now:
$ psql --version
psql (PostgreSQL) 9.6.1
How can I successfully run the query?
Try to take it into double quotes - like "Continent" in the query:
SELECT "Continent"
FROM network.countries
...
In working with SQLAlchemy environment, i have got this error with the SQL like this,
db.session.execute(
text('SELECT name,type,ST_Area(geom) FROM buildings WHERE type == "plaza" '))
ERROR: column "plaza" does not exist
Well, i changed == by = , Error still persists, then i interchanged the quotes, like follows. It worked. Weird!
....
text("SELECT name,type,ST_Area(geom) FROM buildings WHERE type = 'plaza' "))
This problem occurs in postgres because the table name is not tablename instead it is "tablename".
for eg.
If it shows user as table name,
than table name is "user".
See this:
Such an error can appear when you add a space in the name of a column by mistake (for example "users ").
QUICK FIX (TRICK)
If you have recently added a field which you have already deleted before and now trying to add the same field back then let me share you this simple trick! i did this and the problem was gone!!
so, now just delete the migration folder entirely on the app,then instead of adding that field you need to now add a field but with the name of which you have never declared on this app before, example if you are trying to add title field then create it by the name of heading and now do the migration process separately on the app and runserver, now go to admin page and look for that model and delete all the objects and come to models back and rename the field that you recently made and name it to which you were wishing it with earlier and do the migrations again and now your problem must have been gone!!
this occurs when the objects are there in the db but you added a field which wasn't there when the earlier objs were made, so by this we can delete those objs and make fresh ones again!
I got the same error when I do PIVOT in RedShift.
My code is similar to
SELECT *
INTO output_table
FROM (
SELECT name, year_month, sales
FROM input_table
)
PIVOT
(
SUM(sales)
FOR year_month IN ('nov_2020', 'dec_2020', 'jan_2021', 'feb_2021', 'mar_2021', 'apr_2021', 'may_2021', 'jun_2021', 'jul_2021', 'aug_2021',
'sep_2021', 'oct_2021', 'nov_2021', 'dec_2021', 'jan_2022', 'feb_2022', 'mar_2022', 'apr_2022', 'may_2022', 'jun_2022',
'jul_2022', 'aug_2022', 'sep_2022', 'oct_2022', 'nov_2022')
)
I tried year_month without any quote (got the error), year_month with double quote (got the error), and finally year_month with single quote (it works this time). This may help if someone in the same situation like my example.

Postgresql: literal table names

I am making an application that needs to construct Postgresql queries that will execute successfully in scenarios when table names are reserved keywords etc.
In Sql Server syntax this is achieved by wrapping everything in square brackets [] i.e. SELECT * FROM [database].[schema].[table_name].
I thought the equivalent in Postgresql was the use of double quotes "" i.e. SELECT * FROM "database"."schema"."table_name".
However, when I try this in Postgresql I get the error
Relation X doesn't exist
This works:
SELECT * FROM "postgres"."schema_a".Academic_Attainment
But this doesn't:
SELECT * FROM "postgres"."schema_a"."Academic_Attainment"
Related to: Escaping keyword-like column names in Postgres
Any suggestions?
As documented in the manual unquoted identifiers are folded to lowercase.
A quoted identifier is also case sensitive, so "Foo" is a different name than "foo".
So the name Academic_Attainment is the same as academic_attainment. If you really insist on using those dreaded double quotes, then you need to use a lower case identifier:
SELECT *
FROM "schema_a"."academic_attainment"
In general it's strongly recommended to not use quoted identifiers at all. As a rule of thumb: never use double quotes and you are fine.
If you are constructing dynamic SQL, use the format() function to do that together with the %I placeholder. It will take care of quoting if necessary (and only then), e.g.
format('select * from %I.%I', 'public', 'some_table') yields select * from public.some_table but format('select * from %I.%I', 'public', 'group') yields select * from public."group"
Unrelated to your question: Postgres doesn't support cross-database queries, so you should not get into the habit including the database name into your fully qualified names. The syntax you are using only works because you are connected to the database postgres. So I would recommend to stop using the database name in any table reference.

Query insists on quoted columns

I have a local copy of Postgres running, and I'm working on a C# .Net Core 2.1 app using nHibernate as an ORM.
It's started throwing an exception: PostgresException: 42703: column this_.datasetname does not exist
When I copy the SQL and run in pgAdmin I get a similar error.
This is a short version of the SQL which gives the same error:
SELECT this_.datasetName FROM orders this_
ERROR: column this_.datasetname does not exist LINE 1: SELECT
this_.datasetName FROM orders this_
^ HINT: Perhaps you meant to reference the column "this_.datasetName". SQL state: 42703 Character: 8
If I add quotes around the column name (but not around _this. as suggested) it works, but obviously I can't tell nHibernate to do that.
SELECT this_."datasetName" FROM orders this_
The following also works fine:
SELECT "datasetName" FROM orders
Why would it insist on adding the quotes? It never used to.
That's because this column was created with the surrounding double quotes in the first place - this makes the identifier case-sensitive, while by default it isn't. Since the identifier contains mixed case, you are stucked: the identifier needs to be quoted everywhere you use it.
If you look at the definition of the table, you will see something like:
create table orders (
...,
"datasetName" text,
...
)
I would strongly suggest fixing your schema. Quoted identifiers add no value in general, while on the other hand they make things unnecessary complicated. Camel case does not fill well for database identifiers, snake case is better, since case is not meaningful:
create table orders (
...,
dataset_name text,
...
)

Create table with postgreSQL [duplicate]

I'm trying to run the following PHP script to do a simple database query:
$db_host = "localhost";
$db_name = "showfinder";
$username = "user";
$password = "password";
$dbconn = pg_connect("host=$db_host dbname=$db_name user=$username password=$password")
or die('Could not connect: ' . pg_last_error());
$query = 'SELECT * FROM sf_bands LIMIT 10';
$result = pg_query($query) or die('Query failed: ' . pg_last_error());
This produces the following error:
Query failed: ERROR: relation "sf_bands" does not exist
In all the examples I can find where someone gets an error stating the relation does not exist, it's because they use uppercase letters in their table name. My table name does not have uppercase letters. Is there a way to query my table without including the database name, i.e. showfinder.sf_bands?
From what I've read, this error means that you're not referencing the table name correctly. One common reason is that the table is defined with a mixed-case spelling, and you're trying to query it with all lower-case.
In other words, the following fails:
CREATE TABLE "SF_Bands" ( ... );
SELECT * FROM sf_bands; -- ERROR!
Use double-quotes to delimit identifiers so you can use the specific mixed-case spelling as the table is defined.
SELECT * FROM "SF_Bands";
Re your comment, you can add a schema to the "search_path" so that when you reference a table name without qualifying its schema, the query will match that table name by checked each schema in order. Just like PATH in the shell or include_path in PHP, etc. You can check your current schema search path:
SHOW search_path
"$user",public
You can change your schema search path:
SET search_path TO showfinder,public;
See also http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/ddl-schemas.html
I had problems with this and this is the story (sad but true) :
If your table name is all lower case like : accounts
you can use: select * from AcCounTs and it will work fine
If your table name is all lower case like : accounts
The following will fail:
select * from "AcCounTs"
If your table name is mixed case like : Accounts
The following will fail:
select * from accounts
If your table name is mixed case like : Accounts
The following will work OK:
select * from "Accounts"
I dont like remembering useless stuff like this but you have to ;)
Postgres process query different from other RDMS. Put schema name in double quote before your table name like this, "SCHEMA_NAME"."SF_Bands"
Put the dbname parameter in your connection string. It works for me while everything else failed.
Also when doing the select, specify the your_schema.your_table like this:
select * from my_schema.your_table
If a table name contains underscores or upper case, you need to surround it in double-quotes.
SELECT * from "Table_Name";
I had a similar problem on OSX but tried to play around with double and single quotes. For your case, you could try something like this
$query = 'SELECT * FROM "sf_bands"'; // NOTE: double quotes on "sf_Bands"
This is realy helpfull
SET search_path TO schema,public;
I digged this issues more, and found out about how to set this "search_path" by defoult for a new user in current database.
Open DataBase Properties then open Sheet "Variables"
and simply add this variable for your user with actual value.
So now your user will get this schema_name by defoult and you could use tableName without schemaName.
You must write schema name and table name in qutotation mark. As below:
select * from "schemaName"."tableName";
I had the same issue as above and I am using PostgreSQL 10.5.
I tried everything as above but nothing seems to be working.
Then I closed the pgadmin and opened a session for the PSQL terminal.
Logged into the PSQL and connected to the database and schema respectively :
\c <DATABASE_NAME>;
set search_path to <SCHEMA_NAME>;
Then, restarted the pgadmin console and then I was able to work without issue in the query-tool of the pagadmin.
For me the problem was, that I had used a query to that particular table while Django was initialized. Of course it will then throw an error, because those tables did not exist. In my case, it was a get_or_create method within a admin.py file, that was executed whenever the software ran any kind of operation (in this case the migration). Hope that helps someone.
In addition to Bill Karwin's answer =>
Yes, you should surround the table name with double quotes. However, be aware that most probably php will not allow you to just write simply:
$query = "SELECT * FROM "SF_Bands"";
Instead, you should use single quotes while surrounding the query as sav said.
$query = 'SELECT * FROM "SF_Bands"';
You have to add the schema first e.g.
SELECT * FROM place.user_place;
If you don't want to add that in all queries then try this:
SET search_path TO place;
Now it will works:
SELECT * FROM user_place;
Easiest workaround is Just change the table name and all column names to lowercase and your issue will be resolved.
For example:
Change Table_Name to table_name and
Change ColumnName to columnname
It might be silly for a few, but in my case - once I created the table I could able to query the table on the same session, but if I relogin with new session table does not exits.
Then I used commit just after creating the table and now I could able to find and query the table in the new session as well. Like this:
select * from my_schema.my_tbl;
Hope this would help a few.
Make sure that Table name doesn't contain any trailing whitespaces
Try this: SCHEMA_NAME.TABLE_NAME
I'd suggest checking if you run the migrations or if the table exists in the database.
I tried every good answer ( upvote > 10) but not works.
I met this problem in pgAdmin4.
so my solution is quite simple:
find the target table / scheme.
mouse right click, and click: query-tool
in this new query tool window, you can run your SQL without specifying set search_path to <SCHEMA_NAME>;
you can see the result: