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PostgreSQL Composites

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PostgreSQL like Oracle supports record data types but unlike Oracle, PostgreSQL doesn’t support collections of record data types. Here’s an example of how to define a PostgreSQL composite data type, and how to use it as a column’s data type.

CREATE TYPE address_type AS
( street_address  VARCHAR
, city            VARCHAR
, state           VARCHAR
, zip_code        VARCHAR );

Then, you define an ADDRESS table, like:

CREATE TABLE address
( address_id      SERIAL
, address_struct  ADDRESS_TYPE );

You can now insert rows like:

-- Insert the first row.
INSERT INTO address
( address_struct )
VALUES
(('52 Hubble Street','Lexington','KY','40511-1225'));
 
-- Insert the second row.
INSERT INTO address
( address_struct )
VALUES
(('54 Hubble Street','Lexington','KY','40511-1225'));

Then, you can query them like this:

SELECT * FROM address;

It returns:

 address_id |                address_struct
------------+----------------------------------------------
          1 | ("52 Hubble Street",Lexington,KY,40511-1225)
          2 | ("54 Hubble Street",Lexington,KY,40511-1225)
(2 rows)

You must use parentheses around the ADDRESS_STRUCT column to query individual items, like:

SELECT   address_id
,       (address_struct).street_address
,       (address_struct).city
,       (address_struct).state
,       (address_struct).zip_code
FROM     address;

It returns output like a table:

 address_id |  street_address  |   city    | state |  zip_code
------------+------------------+-----------+-------+------------
          1 | 52 Hubble Street | Lexington | KY    | 40511-1225
          2 | 54 Hubble Street | Lexington | KY    | 40511-1225
(2 rows)

While you can define a table that holds an array of a composite type, there’s no syntax that appears to work with an array of a composite type. I hope this helps those interested in implementing record structures in PostgreSQL.

Written by maclochlainn

March 16th, 2015 at 2:02 am

Posted in PostgreSQL,psql,sql

Tagged with ,

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