How to split a string in a smart way? - postgresql

Question

Function string_to_array splits strings without grouping substrings in apostrophes:
# select unnest(string_to_array('one, "two,three"', ','));
unnest
--------
one
"two
three"
(3 rows)
I would like to have a smarter function, like this:
# select unnest(smarter_string_to_array('one, "two,three"', ','));
unnest
--------
one
two,three
(2 rows)
Purpose.
I know that COPY command does it in a proper way, but I need this feature internally.
I want to parse a text representation of rows of existing table. Example:
# select * from dataset limit 2;
id | name | state
----+-----------------+--------
1 | Smith, Reginald | Canada
2 | Jones, Susan |
(2 rows)
# select dataset::text from dataset limit 2;
dataset
------------------------------
(1,"Smith, Reginald",Canada)
(2,"Jones, Susan","")
(2 rows)
I want to do it dynamically in a plpgsql function for different tables. I cannot assume constant number of columns of a table nor a format of columns values.

Answer 1

There is a nice method to transpose a whole table into a one-column table:
select (json_each_text(row_to_json(t))).value from dataset t;
If the column id is unique then
select id, array_agg(value) arr from (
select row_number() over() rn, id, value from (
select id, (json_each_text(row_to_json(t))).value from dataset t
) alias
order by id, rn
) alias
group by id;
gives you exactly what you want. Additional query with row_number() is necessary to keep original order of columns.