PLPGSQL function returning trigger AND value - postgresql

I have written a PL/PGSQL function that returns a trigger, so I can call it before each row insert. I realize now that I would also like that function to return the ID of the newly inserted row. I'm not quite sure how to proceed since my function must return a trigger. Here's some code:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION f_insert_album() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
DECLARE
subj_album_id INTEGER;
BEGIN
-- ... some parts where left out
INSERT INTO t_albums_subjective (user_id, album_id, format_id, location_id, rating)
VALUES (NEW.user_id, obj_album_id, NEW.format_id, NEW.location_id, NEW.rating)
RETURNING id INTO subj_album_id;
RETURN NEW;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
-- Bind insert function to trigger
DROP TRIGGER IF EXISTS tr_v_albums_insert ON v_albums;
CREATE TRIGGER tr_v_albums_insert INSTEAD OF INSERT ON v_albums
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE f_insert_album();
I must keep the return type of my function f_insert_album() to TRIGGER, but I would really like to also return the value in subj_album_id, corresponding to the id of the newly inserted row.
Is there anyway to do this? Is it even possible? Obviously changing the return type didn't work with Postgres. Could you suggest an alternative approach if any?

The crucial question: where to return the ID to?
Assuming you want to return it from the INSERT statement directly, then you are almost there. You already assign the newly generated ID to a function parameter:
...
RETURNING id INTO subj_album_id;
Instead, assign it to a column of the row firing the trigger. The special variable NEW holds this row in a trigger function:
...
RETURNING id INTO NEW.album_id; -- use actual column name in view
Then use the RETURNING clause of the INSERT statement:
INSERT INTO v_albums (user_id, format_id, location_id, rating)
VALUES ( ... )
RETURNING album_id;
Obviously, this is only possible if there is a visible column in the view. It does not have to be assigned in the INSERT command, though. The type of the NEW row variable is defined by the definition of the view, not by the INSERT at hand.
Closely related:
RETURNING data from updatable view not working?
For what you seem to be doing (grant access to certain rows of a table to a certain role) row level security (RLS) in Postgres 9.5 or later might be a more convenient alternative:
CREATE POLICY in the manual
The Postgres Wiki: "What's new in PostgreSQL 9.5"
Review by Depesz

Related

How to upgrade table inside a trigger function in POSTGRESQL?

I would like to create a trigger function inside my database which checks, if the newly "inserted" value (max_bid) is at least +1 greater than the largest max_bid value currently in the table.
If this is the case, the max_bid value inside the table should be updated, although not with the newly "inserted" value, but instead it should be increased by 1.
For instance, if max_bid is 10 and the newly "inserted" max_bid is 20, the max_bid value inside the table should be increased by +1 (in this case 11).
I tried to do it with a trigger, but unfortunatelly it doesn't work. Please help me to solve this problem.
Here is my code:
CREATE TABLE bidtable (
mail_buyer VARCHAR(80) NOT NULL,
auction_id INTEGER NOT NULL,
max_bid INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (mail_buyer),
);
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION max_bid()
RETURNS TRIGGER LANGUAGE PLPGSQL AS $$
DECLARE
current_maxbid INTEGER;
BEGIN
SELECT MAX(max_bid) INTO current_maxbid
FROM bidtable WHERE NEW.auction_id = OLD.auction_id;
IF (NEW.max_bid < (current_maxbid + 1)) THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION 'error';
RETURN NULL;
END IF;
UPDATE bidtable SET max_bid = (current_maxbid + 1)
WHERE NEW.auction_id = OLD.auction_id
AND NEW.mail_buyer = OLD.mail_buyer;
RETURN NEW;
END;
$$;
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER max_bid_trigger
BEFORE INSERT
ON bidtable
FOR EACH ROW
EXECUTE PROCEDURE max_bid();
Thank you very much for your help.
In a trigger function that is called for an INSERT operation the OLD implicit record variable is null, which is probably the cause of "unfortunately it doesn't work".
Trigger function
In a case like this there is a much easier solution. First of all, disregard the value for max_bid upon input because you require a specific value in all cases. Instead, you are going to set it to that specific value in the function. The trigger function can then be simplified to:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION set_max_bid() -- Function name different from column name
RETURNS TRIGGER LANGUAGE PLPGSQL AS $$
BEGIN
SELECT MAX(max_bid) + 1 INTO NEW.max_bid
FROM bidtable
WHERE auction_id = NEW.auction_id;
RETURN NEW;
END; $$;
That's all there is to it for the trigger function. Update the trigger to the new function name and it should work.
Concurrency
As several comments to your question pointed out, you run the risk of getting duplicates. This will currently not generate an error because you do not have an appropriate constraint on your table. Avoiding duplicates requires a table constraint like:
UNIQUE (auction_id, max_bid)
You cannot deal with any concurrency issue in the trigger function because the INSERT operation will take place after the trigger function completes with a RETURN NEW statement. What would be the most appropriate way to deal with this depends on your application. Your options are table locking to block any concurrent inserts, or looping in a function until the insert succeeds.
Avoid the concurrency issue altogether
If you can change the structure of the bidtable table, you can get rid of the whole concurrency issue by changing your business logic to not require the max_bid column. The max_bid column appears to indicate the order in which bids were placed for each auction_id. If that is the case then you could add a serial column to your table and use that to indicate order of bids being placed (for all auctions). That serial column could then also be the PRIMARY KEY to make your table more agile (no indexing on a large text column). The table would look something like this:
CREATE TABLE bidtable (
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
mail_buyer VARCHAR(80) NOT NULL,
auction_id INTEGER NOT NULL
);
You can drop your trigger and trigger function and just depend on the proper id value being supplied by the system.
The bids for a specific action can then be extracted using a straightforward SELECT:
SELECT id, mail_buyer
FROM bidtable
WHERE auction_id = xxx
ORDER BY id;
If you require a max_bid-like value (the id values increment over the full set of auctions), you can use a simple window function:
SELECT mail_buyer, row_number() AS max_bid OVER (PARTITION BY auction_id ORDER BY id)
FROM bidtable
WHERE auction_id = xxx;

Get data of multiple inserted rows in one object using trigger in postgres

I am trying to write a trigger which gets data from the table attribute in which multiple rows are inserted corresponding to one actionId at one time and group all that data into the one object:
Table Schema
actionId
key
value
I am firing trigger on rows insertion,SO how can I handle this multiple row insertion and how can I collect all the data.
CREATE TRIGGER attribute_changes
AFTER INSERT
ON attributes
FOR EACH ROW
EXECUTE PROCEDURE log_attribute_changes();
and the function,
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION wflowr222.log_task_extendedattribute_changes()
RETURNS trigger AS
$BODY$
DECLARE
_message json;
_extendedAttributes jsonb;
BEGIN
SELECT json_agg(tmp)
INTO _extendedAttributes
FROM (
-- your subquery goes here, for example:
SELECT attributes.key, attributes.value
FROM attributes
WHERE attributes.actionId=NEW.actionId
) tmp;
_message :=json_build_object('actionId',NEW.actionId,'extendedAttributes',_extendedAttributes);
INSERT INTO wflowr222.irisevents(message)
VALUES(_message );
RETURN NULL;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql VOLATILE
COST 100;
and data format is,
actionId key value
2 flag true
2 image http:test.com/image
2 status New
I tried to do it via Insert trigger, but it is firing on each row inserted.
If anyone has any idea about this?
I expect that the problem is that you're using a FOR EACH ROW trigger; what you likely want is a FOR EACH STATEMENT trigger - ie. which only fires once for your multi-line INSERT statement. See the description at https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-createtrigger.html for a more through explanation.
AFAICT, you will also need to add REFERENCING NEW TABLE AS NEW in this mode to make the NEW reference available to the trigger function. So your CREATE TRIGGER syntax would need to be:
CREATE TRIGGER attribute_changes
AFTER INSERT
ON attributes
REFERENCING NEW TABLE AS NEW
FOR EACH STATEMENT
EXECUTE PROCEDURE log_attribute_changes();
I've read elsewhere that the required REFERENCING NEW TABLE ... syntax is only supported in PostgreSQL 10 and later.
Considering the version of postgres you have, and therefore keeping in mind that you can't use a trigger defined FOR EACH STATEMENT for your purpose, the only alternative I see is
using a trigger after insert in order to collect some information about changes in a utility table
using a unix cron that execute a pl/sql that do the job on data set
For example:
Your utility table
CREATE TABLE utility (
actionid integer,
createtime timestamp
);
You can define a trigger FOR EACH ROW with a body that do something like this
INSERT INTO utilty values(NEW.actionid, curent_timestamp);
And, finally, have a crontab UNIX that execute a file or a procedure that to something like this:
SELECT a.* FROM utility u JOIN yourtable a ON a.actionid = u.actionid WHERE u.createtime < current_timestamp;
// do something here with records selected above
TRUNCATE table utility;
If you had postgres 9.5 you could have used pg_cron instead of unix cron...

Default values in Postgres view with triggered instead-of update

I was planning on having a view with instead of insert trigger. There seems to be a problem with inserting a default value though.
Having the trigger set up as below, the following query fails
INSERT INTO v1.clients (foo) VALUES ('bar')
this returns a
null value in column "is_admin" violates not-null constraint
even though the underlying data.users (not null) table has a default value set.
What I'd say happens is the view translates all missing values to null and the instead of is applied, trying to insert null to a not null default false column.
Can I somehow set up the trigger to instead of trying to insert null to insert the default value? Having coalesce(NEW.is_admin, default) in the relevant insert in the trigger is a syntax error. I would rather not duplicate the default value manually in trigger.
Is this supported in postgres? What would be the best approach to split a view of two tables to those tables, while allowing default values?
definitions:
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW v1.clients AS
SELECT
c.id, c.foo,
u.id user_id, u.is_admin
FROM data.clients c
INNER JOIN data.users u ON u.client_id = c.id;
CREATE FUNCTION data.separate_client_user_data()
RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
DECLARE
client_id clients.id%TYPE;
BEGIN
INSERT INTO data.clients (foo) VALUES (NEW.foo) RETURNING id INTO client_id;
INSERT INTO data.users (client_id, is_admin)
VALUES (client_id, NEW.is_admin);
RETURN NEW;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
CREATE TRIGGER user_data_trigger
INSTEAD OF INSERT ON v1.clients
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE data.separate_client_user_data();
Late to the game, I know, but I have extra insight I want to share.
Note that, as Patrick said, the NEW variable that the TRIGGER PROCEDURE uses contains all the fields - with NULLs added for any fields that were not originally part of your INSERT statement.
As you pointed out, the underlying table has a default value for the is_admin field, and unfortunately that default value doesn't get a chance to be seen, because the NEW variable already has NEW.is_admin = NULL.
However, I want to point out a different solution from Patrick's. It's true that you can hand-code the IF checks (essentially re-implementing the default value logic!) in your plpgsql function. But this may feel non-optimal from a DRY perspective. Here was the key for me when I had your problem:
TL/DR
The default values of the view itself are honored when building the NEW variable. Therefore if you do ALTER TABLE <view_name> ALTER is_admin SET DEFAULT false it should cause false to be passed in to NEW.is_admin, instead of NULL.
Hope that helps!
In a trigger function, the NEW and OLD implicit parameters always contain all the fields of the underlying table or view, with NULL assigned to fields for which no data is available. This is the correct behaviour, otherwise you could never assign a value to a field with no data.
In case you have a field with a NULL value and you want to get the DEFAULT value upon INSERT instead, you should test for it prior to doing the INSERT:
CREATE FUNCTION data.separate_client_user_data() RETURNS trigger AS $$
DECLARE
cid clients.id%TYPE; -- Don't use variable with same name as a column
BEGIN
INSERT INTO data.clients (foo) VALUES (NEW.foo) RETURNING id INTO cid;
IF NEW.is_admin IS NULL THEN
INSERT INTO data.users (client_id)
VALUES (cid); -- Use default value for is_admin
ELSE
INSERT INTO data.users (client_id, is_admin)
VALUES (cid, NEW.is_admin);
END IF;
RETURN NEW;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

How to create a Trigger in PostgreSql?

TRIGEER-->To get a column value from one table to other table when i insert values?
I am having two tables(customer_details and loan_balance).
What i need is, I must get the column (custid)of customer_details table to the loan_balance table when i insert the data into the loan_balance table.
This is the full set up of my query : SQL FIDDLE
So i need a trigger to be raised and the data should be updated automatically without dynamic insertion of custid.
Postgres has an unconventional way of creating triggers:
create a function that returns type trigger and return the NEW row record
create a trigger that executes the function
Here's the code you need:
CREATE FUNCTION synch_custid_proc()
RETURNS trigger AS $$
BEGIN
NEW.custid = (
select max(custid)
from customer_details
where creditid = NEW.creditid
);
RETURN NEW;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql
CREATE TRIGGER synch_custid_trig
BEFORE INSERT ON loan_amount
FOR EACH ROW
EXECUTE PROCEDURE synch_custid_proc();
I chosen to select max(custid) rather than simply custid when finding the value in case there are multiple rows that match. You might have to adjust this logic to suit your data.
See a live demo on SQLFiddle

Getting row values based on array of column names passed to PostgreSQL function

I'm trying to set up full text search in PostgreSQL 9.2. I created a new table to hold the content that I want to search (so that I can search across lots of different types of items), which looks like this:
CREATE TABLE search (
target_id bigint PRIMARY KEY,
target_type text,
fts tsvector
);
CREATE INDEX search_fts ON search USING gin(fts);
Every time a new item gets inserted (or updated) into one of the various tables I want to search across, it should automatically be added to the search table. Assuming that my table looks like the following:
CREATE TABLE item (id bigint PRIMARY KEY, name text NOT NULL, description text);
I created a trigger passing in the column names that I want to be able to search:
CREATE TRIGGER insert_item_search BEFORE INSERT
ON item FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE
insert_search('{name, description}'::text[]);
Then created a new function insert_search as:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION insert_search(cols text[]) RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
INSERT INTO search (target_id, target_type, fts) VALUES (
NEW.id, TG_TABLE_NAME, to_tsvector('english', 'foo')
);
RETURN NEW;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE PLPGSQL;
My question is, how do I pass in the table values based on cols to to_tsvector? Right now, the function is getting called and inserts the id and type correctly, but I don't know the right way to dynamically grab the other values based on the cols argument.
First, to pass arguments, just send them directly:
CREATE TRIGGER insert_item_search BEFORE INSERT
ON item FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE
insert_search('name', 'description');
And, from PL/pgSQL you will get those arguments as an array, called TG_ARGV. But, the problem is that PL/pgSQL cannot get the values from NEW record based on their names. To do that you can either use a language that lets you do that (like PL/python or PL/perl) or use the hstore extension.
I'd stick with the last one and use hstore (unless you already use one of the other languages to create functions):
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION insert_search() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
DECLARE
v_new hstore;
BEGIN
v_new = hstore(NEW); -- convert the record to hstore
FOR i IN 0..(TG_NARGS-1) LOOP
INSERT INTO search (target_id, target_type, fts) VALUES (
NEW.id, TG_TABLE_NAME, to_tsvector('english', v_new -> TG_ARGV[i])
);
END LOOP;
RETURN NEW;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE PLPGSQL;
As you can see above, I used the hstore's operator -> to get the value based on the name (on TG_ARGV[i]).
You can access the parameters specified in the trigger definition with the TG_ARGV variable. You can find documentation on that here. TG_ARGV is an array accessed by a 0 based index. So it would be something like TG_ARGV[0], TG_ARGV[1], and so on.