SELECTing commands into a temp table to EXECUTE later in PostgreSQL - postgresql

Question

For some fancy database maintenance for my developer database I'd like to be able to use queries to generate commands to alter the database. The thing is: I'm a complete greenhorn to PostgreSQL. I've made my attempt but have failed colorfully.
So in the end, I would like to have a table with a single column and each row would be a command (or group of commands, depending on the case) that I would think would look something like this...
DO $$
DECLARE
command_entry RECORD;
BEGIN
FOR command_entry IN SELECT * FROM list_of_commands
LOOP
EXECUTE command_entry;
END LOOP;
END;
$$;
Where the table list_of_commands could be populated with something like the following (which in this example would remove all tables from the public schema)...
CREATE TEMP TABLE list_of_commands AS
SELECT 'drop table if exists "' || tablename || '" cascade;'
FROM pg_tables
WHERE schemaname = 'public';
However, with this I get the following error...
ERROR: syntax error at or near ""drop table if exists ""dummy_table"" cascade;""
LINE 1: ("drop table if exists ""dummy_table"" cascade;")
I assume this is a matter of escaping characters, but I'm not entirely sure how to fit that into either A) the population of the table or B) the execution of each row. Does anyone know what I could do to achieve the desired result?

Answer 1

The command_entry variable is of type record while the EXECUTE command expects a string. What is apparently happening is that PostgreSQL turns the record into a double-quoted string, but that messes up your command. Also, your temp table does not use a column name, making things a bit awkward to work with (the column name becomes ?column?), so change both as follows:
CREATE TEMP TABLE list_of_commands AS
SELECT 'drop table if exists public.' || quote_ident(tablename) || ' cascade' AS cmd
FROM pg_tables
WHERE schemaname = 'public';
DO $$
DECLARE
command_entry varchar;
BEGIN
FOR command_entry IN SELECT cmd FROM list_of_commands
LOOP
EXECUTE command_entry;
END LOOP;
END;
$$;
But seeing that you do all of this at session level (temp table, anonymous code block), why not write a stored procedure that performs all of this housekeeping when you are ready to do spring cleaning?
CREATE FUNCTION cleanup() RETURNS void AS $$
BEGIN
FOR tbl IN SELECT tablename FROM pg_tables WHERE schemaname = 'public'
LOOP
EXECUTE 'DROP TABLE IF EXISTS ' || quote_ident(tbl) || ' CASCADE';
END LOOP;
-- More housekeeping jobs
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
This saves a lot of typing: SELECT cleanup();. Any other housekeeping jobs you have you simply add to the stored procedure.

Answer 2

I had trouble with Patrick's answers, so here is an updated version for postgreSQL 10.
CREATE FUNCTION droptables(sn varchar) RETURNS void AS $$
DECLARE
tbl varchar;
BEGIN
FOR tbl IN SELECT tablename FROM pg_tables WHERE schemaname = sn
LOOP
EXECUTE 'DROP TABLE IF EXISTS ' || quote_ident(tbl) || ' CASCADE';
END LOOP;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
And then "SELECT droptables('public');".