Loop on tables with PL/pgSQL in Postgres 9.0+ - postgresql

Question

I want to loop through all my tables to count rows in each of them. The following query gets me an error:
DO $$
DECLARE
tables CURSOR FOR
SELECT tablename FROM pg_tables
WHERE tablename NOT LIKE 'pg_%'
ORDER BY tablename;
tablename varchar(100);
nbRow int;
BEGIN
FOR tablename IN tables LOOP
EXECUTE 'SELECT count(*) FROM ' || tablename INTO nbRow;
-- Do something with nbRow
END LOOP;
END$$;
Errors:
ERROR: syntax error at or near ")"
LINE 1: SELECT count(*) FROM (sql_features)
^
QUERY: SELECT count(*) FROM (sql_features)
CONTEXT: PL/pgSQL function inline_code_block line 8 at EXECUTE statement
sql_features is a table's name in my DB. I already tried to use quote_ident() but to no avail.

Answer 1

I can't remember the last time I actually needed to use an explicit cursor for looping in PL/pgSQL.
Use the implicit cursor of a FOR loop, that's much cleaner:
DO
$$
DECLARE
rec record;
nbrow bigint;
BEGIN
FOR rec IN
SELECT *
FROM pg_tables
WHERE tablename NOT LIKE 'pg\_%'
ORDER BY tablename
LOOP
EXECUTE 'SELECT count(*) FROM '
|| quote_ident(rec.schemaname) || '.'
|| quote_ident(rec.tablename)
INTO nbrow;
-- Do something with nbrow
END LOOP;
END
$$;
You need to include the schema name to make this work for all schemas (including those not in your search_path).
Also, you actually need to use quote_ident() or format() with %I or a regclass variable to safeguard against SQL injection. A table name can be almost anything inside double quotes. See:
Table name as a PostgreSQL function parameter
Minor detail: escape the underscore (_) in the LIKE pattern to make it a literal underscore: tablename NOT LIKE 'pg\_%'
How I might do it:
DO
$$
DECLARE
tbl regclass;
nbrow bigint;
BEGIN
FOR tbl IN
SELECT c.oid
FROM pg_class c
JOIN pg_namespace n ON n.oid = c.relnamespace
WHERE c.relkind = 'r'
AND n.nspname NOT LIKE 'pg\_%' -- system schema(s)
AND n.nspname <> 'information_schema' -- information schema
ORDER BY n.nspname, c.relname
LOOP
EXECUTE 'SELECT count(*) FROM ' || tbl INTO nbrow;
-- raise notice '%: % rows', tbl, nbrow;
END LOOP;
END
$$;
Query pg_catalog.pg_class instead of tablename, it provides the OID of the table.
The object identifier type regclass is handy to simplify. n particular, table names are double-quoted and schema-qualified where necessary automatically (also prevents SQL injection).
This query also excludes temporary tables (temp schema is named pg_temp% internally).
To only include tables from a given schema:
AND n.nspname = 'public' -- schema name here, case-sensitive

Answer 2

The cursor returns a record, not a scalar value, so "tablename" is not a string variable.
The concatenation turns the record into a string that looks like this (sql_features). If you had selected e.g. the schemaname with the tablename, the text representation of the record would have been (public,sql_features).
So you need to access the column inside the record to create your SQL statement:
DO $$
DECLARE
tables CURSOR FOR
SELECT tablename
FROM pg_tables
WHERE tablename NOT LIKE 'pg_%'
ORDER BY tablename;
nbRow int;
BEGIN
FOR table_record IN tables LOOP
EXECUTE 'SELECT count(*) FROM ' || table_record.tablename INTO nbRow;
-- Do something with nbRow
END LOOP;
END$$;
You might want to use WHERE schemaname = 'public' instead of not like 'pg_%' to exclude the Postgres system tables.