How to log delete queries on Postgresql? - postgresql

Question

I created a function which writes information about table deletions.
And another function which simply adds a trigger call after delete.
But I would like to store the whole row as string into my table.
According to Postgresql Documentation it should work by adding "OLD.*" into a text based column. But it fails telling me that I try to put too many columns into this table.
OLD is from type RECORD. And i want to have it in my text field like "value1,value2,value3" or it could be "colname:value,colname2:value". I dont care, I just want to see the row which has been deleted.
Another approach can be to log all delete queries from pg_stat_activity. But I don't know how to do that. Simply accessing pg_stat_activity every second would cause too much traffic I guess.
My table is simple:
create table delete_history (date timestamp, tablename varchar(100), data text);
This is my function:
CREATE or REPLACE FUNCTION ondelete() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
INSERT INTO delete_history VALUES (CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, TG_TABLE_NAME, OLD.*);
RETURN OLD;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
This is my trigger:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION history_create_triggers() RETURNS void
AS $$
DECLARE
r RECORD;
BEGIN
FOR r IN SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema = 'public' AND table_type='BASE TABLE' LOOP
EXECUTE 'CREATE TRIGGER log_history AFTER DELETE ON public.' || r.table_name || ' FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE ondelete();';
END LOOP;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Answer 1

You can convert type record into text:
CREATE or REPLACE FUNCTION ondelete() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
INSERT INTO delete_history VALUES (CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, TG_TABLE_NAME, OLD::text);
RETURN OLD;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
sql fiddle demo
another approach could be converting your row into JSON with row_to_json function (if you have version 9.2):
CREATE or REPLACE FUNCTION ondelete() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
INSERT INTO delete_history VALUES (CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, TG_TABLE_NAME, row_to_json(OLD));
RETURN OLD;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
sql fiddle demo
Another approach can be convert your data to hstore
CREATE or REPLACE FUNCTION ondelete() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
INSERT INTO delete_history VALUES (CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, TG_TABLE_NAME, hstore(OLD));
RETURN OLD;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
I can't test it now - sqlfiddle is not allowing to use hstore.