Chapter 39.

PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural

Language

39.1. Overview
PL/pgSQL is a loadable procedural language for the PostgreSQL database system. The design goals
of PL/pgSQL were to create a loadable procedural language that

• can be used to create functions and trigger procedures,

• adds control structures to the SQL language,
• can perform complex computations,
• inherits all user-defined types, functions, and operators,
• can be defined to be trusted by the server,
• is easy to use.

Functions created with PL/pgSQL can be used anywhere that built-in functions could be used. For
example, it is possible to create complex conditional computation functions and later use them to
define operators or use them in index expressions.
In PostgreSQL 9.0 and later, PL/pgSQL is installed by default. However it is still a loadable module,
so especially security-conscious administrators could choose to remove it.

39.1.1. Advantages of Using PL/pgSQL

SQL is the language PostgreSQL and most other relational databases use as query language. It’s
portable and easy to learn. But every SQL statement must be executed individually by the database
server.
That means that your client application must send each query to the database server, wait for it to
be processed, receive and process the results, do some computation, then send further queries to the
server. All this incurs interprocess communication and will also incur network overhead if your client
is on a different machine than the database server.
With PL/pgSQL you can group a block of computation and a series of queries inside the database
server, thus having the power of a procedural language and the ease of use of SQL, but with consid-
erable savings of client/server communication overhead.

• Extra round trips between client and server are eliminated

• Intermediate results that the client does not need do not have to be marshaled or transferred between
server and client
• Multiple rounds of query parsing can be avoided
This can result in a considerable performance increase as compared to an application that does not
use stored functions.
Also, with PL/pgSQL you can use all the data types, operators and functions of SQL.

933
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.1.2. Supported Argument and Result Data Types

Functions written in PL/pgSQL can accept as arguments any scalar or array data type supported by the
server, and they can return a result of any of these types. They can also accept or return any composite
type (row type) specified by name. It is also possible to declare a PL/pgSQL function as returning
record, which means that the result is a row type whose columns are determined by specification in
the calling query, as discussed in Section 7.2.1.4.
PL/pgSQL functions can be declared to accept a variable number of arguments by using the
VARIADIC marker. This works exactly the same way as for SQL functions, as discussed in Section
35.4.5.
PL/pgSQL functions can also be declared to accept and return the polymorphic types anyelement,
anyarray, anynonarray, and anyenum. The actual data types handled by a polymorphic function
can vary from call to call, as discussed in Section 35.2.5. An example is shown in Section 39.3.1.
PL/pgSQL functions can also be declared to return a “set” (or table) of any data type that can be
returned as a single instance. Such a function generates its output by executing RETURN NEXT for
each desired element of the result set, or by using RETURN QUERY to output the result of evaluating a
query.
Finally, a PL/pgSQL function can be declared to return void if it has no useful return value.
PL/pgSQL functions can also be declared with output parameters in place of an explicit specification
of the return type. This does not add any fundamental capability to the language, but it is often con-
venient, especially for returning multiple values. The RETURNS TABLE notation can also be used in
place of RETURNS SETOF.
Specific examples appear in Section 39.3.1 and Section 39.6.1.

39.2. Structure of PL/pgSQL

PL/pgSQL is a block-structured language. The complete text of a function definition must be a block.
A block is defined as:

[ <<label>> ]
[ DECLARE
declarations ]
BEGIN
statements
END [ label ];

Each declaration and each statement within a block is terminated by a semicolon. A block that appears
within another block must have a semicolon after END, as shown above; however the final END that
concludes a function body does not require a semicolon.

Tip: A common mistake is to write a semicolon immediately after BEGIN. This is incorrect and will
result in a syntax error.

A label is only needed if you want to identify the block for use in an EXIT statement, or to qualify
the names of the variables declared in the block. If a label is given after END, it must match the label
at the block’s beginning.

934
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

All key words are case-insensitive. Identifiers are implicitly converted to lower case unless double-
quoted, just as they are in ordinary SQL commands.
Comments work the same way in PL/pgSQL code as in ordinary SQL. A double dash (--) starts a
comment that extends to the end of the line. A /* starts a block comment that extends to the matching
occurrence of */. Block comments nest.
Any statement in the statement section of a block can be a subblock. Subblocks can be used for logical
grouping or to localize variables to a small group of statements. Variables declared in a subblock mask
any similarly-named variables of outer blocks for the duration of the subblock; but you can access the
outer variables anyway if you qualify their names with their block’s label. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION somefunc() RETURNS integer AS $$

<< outerblock >>
DECLARE
quantity integer := 30;
BEGIN
RAISE NOTICE ’Quantity here is %’, quantity; -- Prints 30
quantity := 50;
--
-- Create a subblock
--
DECLARE
quantity integer := 80;
BEGIN
RAISE NOTICE ’Quantity here is %’, quantity; -- Prints 80
RAISE NOTICE ’Outer quantity here is %’, outerblock.quantity; -- Prints 50
END;

RAISE NOTICE ’Quantity here is %’, quantity; -- Prints 50

RETURN quantity;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Note: There is actually a hidden “outer block” surrounding the body of any PL/pgSQL function.
This block provides the declarations of the function’s parameters (if any), as well as some special
variables such as FOUND (see Section 39.5.5). The outer block is labeled with the function’s name,
meaning that parameters and special variables can be qualified with the function’s name.

It is important not to confuse the use of BEGIN/END for grouping statements in PL/pgSQL with the
similarly-named SQL commands for transaction control. PL/pgSQL’s BEGIN/END are only for group-
ing; they do not start or end a transaction. Functions and trigger procedures are always executed within
a transaction established by an outer query — they cannot start or commit that transaction, since there
would be no context for them to execute in. However, a block containing an EXCEPTION clause effec-
tively forms a subtransaction that can be rolled back without affecting the outer transaction. For more
about that see Section 39.6.6.

935
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.3. Declarations
All variables used in a block must be declared in the declarations section of the block. (The only
exceptions are that the loop variable of a FOR loop iterating over a range of integer values is auto-
matically declared as an integer variable, and likewise the loop variable of a FOR loop iterating over a
cursor’s result is automatically declared as a record variable.)
PL/pgSQL variables can have any SQL data type, such as integer, varchar, and char.
Here are some examples of variable declarations:

user_id integer;
quantity numeric(5);
url varchar;
myrow tablename%ROWTYPE;
myfield tablename.columnname%TYPE;
arow RECORD;

The general syntax of a variable declaration is:

name [ CONSTANT ] type [ COLLATE collation_name ] [ NOT NULL ] [ { DEFAULT | := } expression

The DEFAULT clause, if given, specifies the initial value assigned to the variable when the block is
entered. If the DEFAULT clause is not given then the variable is initialized to the SQL null value. The
CONSTANT option prevents the variable from being assigned to after initialization, so that its value
will remain constant for the duration of the block. The COLLATE option specifies a collation to use for
the variable (see Section 39.3.6). If NOT NULL is specified, an assignment of a null value results in a
run-time error. All variables declared as NOT NULL must have a nonnull default value specified.
A variable’s default value is evaluated and assigned to the variable each time the block is entered
(not just once per function call). So, for example, assigning now() to a variable of type timestamp
causes the variable to have the time of the current function call, not the time when the function was
precompiled.
Examples:

quantity integer DEFAULT 32;

url varchar := ’http://mysite.com’;
user_id CONSTANT integer := 10;

39.3.1. Declaring Function Parameters

Parameters passed to functions are named with the identifiers $1, $2, etc. Optionally, aliases can be
declared for $n parameter names for increased readability. Either the alias or the numeric identifier
can then be used to refer to the parameter value.
There are two ways to create an alias. The preferred way is to give a name to the parameter in the
CREATE FUNCTION command, for example:

CREATE FUNCTION sales_tax(subtotal real) RETURNS real AS $$

BEGIN
RETURN subtotal * 0.06;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

936
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

The other way, which was the only way available before PostgreSQL 8.0, is to explicitly declare an
alias, using the declaration syntax

name ALIAS FOR $n;

The same example in this style looks like:

CREATE FUNCTION sales_tax(real) RETURNS real AS $$

DECLARE
subtotal ALIAS FOR $1;
BEGIN
RETURN subtotal * 0.06;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Note: These two examples are not perfectly equivalent. In the first case, subtotal could be
referenced as sales_tax.subtotal, but in the second case it could not. (Had we attached a
label to the inner block, subtotal could be qualified with that label, instead.)

Some more examples:

CREATE FUNCTION instr(varchar, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$

DECLARE
v_string ALIAS FOR $1;
index ALIAS FOR $2;
BEGIN
-- some computations using v_string and index here
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE FUNCTION concat_selected_fields(in_t sometablename) RETURNS text AS $$

BEGIN
RETURN in_t.f1 || in_t.f3 || in_t.f5 || in_t.f7;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

When a PL/pgSQL function is declared with output parameters, the output parameters are given $n
names and optional aliases in just the same way as the normal input parameters. An output parameter
is effectively a variable that starts out NULL; it should be assigned to during the execution of the
function. The final value of the parameter is what is returned. For instance, the sales-tax example
could also be done this way:

CREATE FUNCTION sales_tax(subtotal real, OUT tax real) AS $$

BEGIN
tax := subtotal * 0.06;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Notice that we omitted RETURNS real — we could have included it, but it would be redundant.
Output parameters are most useful when returning multiple values. A trivial example is:

937
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

CREATE FUNCTION sum_n_product(x int, y int, OUT sum int, OUT prod int) AS $$
BEGIN
sum := x + y;
prod := x * y;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

As discussed in Section 35.4.4, this effectively creates an anonymous record type for the function’s
results. If a RETURNS clause is given, it must say RETURNS record.
Another way to declare a PL/pgSQL function is with RETURNS TABLE, for example:

CREATE FUNCTION extended_sales(p_itemno int)

RETURNS TABLE(quantity int, total numeric) AS $$
BEGIN
RETURN QUERY SELECT quantity, quantity * price FROM sales
WHERE itemno = p_itemno;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

This is exactly equivalent to declaring one or more OUT parameters and specifying RETURNS SETOF
sometype.

When the return type of a PL/pgSQL function is declared as a polymorphic type (anyelement,
anyarray, anynonarray, or anyenum), a special parameter $0 is created. Its data type is the actual
return type of the function, as deduced from the actual input types (see Section 35.2.5). This allows
the function to access its actual return type as shown in Section 39.3.3. $0 is initialized to null and
can be modified by the function, so it can be used to hold the return value if desired, though that is not
required. $0 can also be given an alias. For example, this function works on any data type that has a
+ operator:

CREATE FUNCTION add_three_values(v1 anyelement, v2 anyelement, v3 anyelement)

RETURNS anyelement AS $$
DECLARE
result ALIAS FOR $0;
BEGIN
result := v1 + v2 + v3;
RETURN result;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

The same effect can be had by declaring one or more output parameters as polymorphic types. In this
case the special $0 parameter is not used; the output parameters themselves serve the same purpose.
For example:

CREATE FUNCTION add_three_values(v1 anyelement, v2 anyelement, v3 anyelement,

OUT sum anyelement)
AS $$
BEGIN
sum := v1 + v2 + v3;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

938
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.3.2. ALIAS
newname ALIAS FOR oldname;

The ALIAS syntax is more general than is suggested in the previous section: you can declare an alias
for any variable, not just function parameters. The main practical use for this is to assign a different
name for variables with predetermined names, such as NEW or OLD within a trigger procedure.
Examples:

DECLARE
prior ALIAS FOR old;
updated ALIAS FOR new;

Since ALIAS creates two different ways to name the same object, unrestricted use can be confusing.
It’s best to use it only for the purpose of overriding predetermined names.

39.3.3. Copying Types

variable%TYPE

%TYPE provides the data type of a variable or table column. You can use this to declare variables that
will hold database values. For example, let’s say you have a column named user_id in your users
table. To declare a variable with the same data type as users.user_id you write:

user_id users.user_id%TYPE;

By using %TYPE you don’t need to know the data type of the structure you are referencing, and most
importantly, if the data type of the referenced item changes in the future (for instance: you change the
type of user_id from integer to real), you might not need to change your function definition.
%TYPE is particularly valuable in polymorphic functions, since the data types needed for internal
variables can change from one call to the next. Appropriate variables can be created by applying
%TYPE to the function’s arguments or result placeholders.

39.3.4. Row Types

name table_name%ROWTYPE;
name composite_type_name;

A variable of a composite type is called a row variable (or row-type variable). Such a variable can
hold a whole row of a SELECT or FOR query result, so long as that query’s column set matches the
declared type of the variable. The individual fields of the row value are accessed using the usual dot
notation, for example rowvar.field.
A row variable can be declared to have the same type as the rows of an existing table or view, by
using the table_name%ROWTYPE notation; or it can be declared by giving a composite type’s name.
(Since every table has an associated composite type of the same name, it actually does not matter in
PostgreSQL whether you write %ROWTYPE or not. But the form with %ROWTYPE is more portable.)
Parameters to a function can be composite types (complete table rows). In that case, the corresponding
identifier $n will be a row variable, and fields can be selected from it, for example $1.user_id.

939
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

Only the user-defined columns of a table row are accessible in a row-type variable, not the OID or
other system columns (because the row could be from a view). The fields of the row type inherit the
table’s field size or precision for data types such as char(n).
Here is an example of using composite types. table1 and table2 are existing tables having at least
the mentioned fields:

CREATE FUNCTION merge_fields(t_row table1) RETURNS text AS $$

DECLARE
t2_row table2%ROWTYPE;
BEGIN
SELECT * INTO t2_row FROM table2 WHERE ... ;
RETURN t_row.f1 || t2_row.f3 || t_row.f5 || t2_row.f7;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT merge_fields(t.*) FROM table1 t WHERE ... ;

39.3.5. Record Types

name RECORD;

Record variables are similar to row-type variables, but they have no predefined structure. They take
on the actual row structure of the row they are assigned during a SELECT or FOR command. The
substructure of a record variable can change each time it is assigned to. A consequence of this is that
until a record variable is first assigned to, it has no substructure, and any attempt to access a field in it
will draw a run-time error.
Note that RECORD is not a true data type, only a placeholder. One should also realize that when a
PL/pgSQL function is declared to return type record, this is not quite the same concept as a record
variable, even though such a function might use a record variable to hold its result. In both cases the
actual row structure is unknown when the function is written, but for a function returning record the
actual structure is determined when the calling query is parsed, whereas a record variable can change
its row structure on-the-fly.

39.3.6. Collation of PL/pgSQL Variables

When a PL/pgSQL function has one or more parameters of collatable data types, a collation is identi-
fied for each function call depending on the collations assigned to the actual arguments, as described
in Section 22.2. If a collation is successfully identified (i.e., there are no conflicts of implicit collations
among the arguments) then all the collatable parameters are treated as having that collation implic-
itly. This will affect the behavior of collation-sensitive operations within the function. For example,
consider

CREATE FUNCTION less_than(a text, b text) RETURNS boolean AS $$

BEGIN
RETURN a < b;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT less_than(text_field_1, text_field_2) FROM table1;

940
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

SELECT less_than(text_field_1, text_field_2 COLLATE "C") FROM table1;

The first use of less_than will use the common collation of text_field_1 and text_field_2
for the comparison, while the second use will use C collation.
Furthermore, the identified collation is also assumed as the collation of any local variables that are of
collatable types. Thus this function would not work any differently if it were written as

CREATE FUNCTION less_than(a text, b text) RETURNS boolean AS $$

DECLARE
local_a text := a;
local_b text := b;
BEGIN
RETURN local_a < local_b;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

If there are no parameters of collatable data types, or no common collation can be identified for them,
then parameters and local variables use the default collation of their data type (which is usually the
database’s default collation, but could be different for variables of domain types).
A local variable of a collatable data type can have a different collation associated with it by including
the COLLATE option in its declaration, for example

DECLARE
local_a text COLLATE "en_US";

This option overrides the collation that would otherwise be given to the variable according to the rules
above.
Also, of course explicit COLLATE clauses can be written inside a function if it is desired to force a
particular collation to be used in a particular operation. For example,

CREATE FUNCTION less_than_c(a text, b text) RETURNS boolean AS $$

BEGIN
RETURN a < b COLLATE "C";
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

This overrides the collations associated with the table columns, parameters, or local variables used in
the expression, just as would happen in a plain SQL command.

39.4. Expressions
All expressions used in PL/pgSQL statements are processed using the server’s main SQL executor.
For example, when you write a PL/pgSQL statement like

IF expression THEN ...

PL/pgSQL will evaluate the expression by feeding a query like

SELECT expression

941
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

to the main SQL engine. While forming the SELECT command, any occurrences of PL/pgSQL vari-
able names are replaced by parameters, as discussed in detail in Section 39.10.1. This allows the
query plan for the SELECT to be prepared just once and then reused for subsequent evaluations with
different values of the variables. Thus, what really happens on first use of an expression is essentially
a PREPARE command. For example, if we have declared two integer variables x and y, and we write

IF x < y THEN ...

what happens behind the scenes is equivalent to

PREPARE statement_name(integer, integer) AS SELECT $1 < $2;

and then this prepared statement is EXECUTEd for each execution of the IF statement, with the current
values of the PL/pgSQL variables supplied as parameter values. The query plan prepared in this way
is saved for the life of the database connection, as described in Section 39.10.2. Normally these details
are not important to a PL/pgSQL user, but they are useful to know when trying to diagnose a problem.

39.5. Basic Statements

In this section and the following ones, we describe all the statement types that are explicitly under-
stood by PL/pgSQL. Anything not recognized as one of these statement types is presumed to be an
SQL command and is sent to the main database engine to execute, as described in Section 39.5.2 and
Section 39.5.3.

39.5.1. Assignment
An assignment of a value to a PL/pgSQL variable is written as:

variable := expression;

As explained previously, the expression in such a statement is evaluated by means of an SQL SELECT
command sent to the main database engine. The expression must yield a single value (possibly a
row value, if the variable is a row or record variable). The target variable can be a simple variable
(optionally qualified with a block name), a field of a row or record variable, or an element of an array
that is a simple variable or field.
If the expression’s result data type doesn’t match the variable’s data type, or the variable has a spe-
cific size/precision (like char(20)), the result value will be implicitly converted by the PL/pgSQL
interpreter using the result type’s output-function and the variable type’s input-function. Note that this
could potentially result in run-time errors generated by the input function, if the string form of the
result value is not acceptable to the input function.
Examples:

tax := subtotal * 0.06;

my_record.user_id := 20;

942
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.5.2. Executing a Command With No Result

For any SQL command that does not return rows, for example INSERT without a RETURNING clause,
you can execute the command within a PL/pgSQL function just by writing the command.
Any PL/pgSQL variable name appearing in the command text is treated as a parameter, and then the
current value of the variable is provided as the parameter value at run time. This is exactly like the
processing described earlier for expressions; for details see Section 39.10.1.
When executing a SQL command in this way, PL/pgSQL plans the command just once and re-uses
the plan on subsequent executions, for the life of the database connection. The implications of this are
discussed in detail in Section 39.10.2.
Sometimes it is useful to evaluate an expression or SELECT query but discard the result, for example
when calling a function that has side-effects but no useful result value. To do this in PL/pgSQL, use
the PERFORM statement:

PERFORM query ;

This executes query and discards the result. Write the query the same way you would write an SQL
SELECT command, but replace the initial keyword SELECT with PERFORM. For WITH queries, use
PERFORM and then place the query in parentheses. (In this case, the query can only return one row.)
PL/pgSQL variables will be substituted into the query just as for commands that return no result,
and the plan is cached in the same way. Also, the special variable FOUND is set to true if the query
produced at least one row, or false if it produced no rows (see Section 39.5.5).

Note: One might expect that writing SELECT directly would accomplish this result, but at present
the only accepted way to do it is PERFORM. A SQL command that can return rows, such as SELECT,
will be rejected as an error unless it has an INTO clause as discussed in the next section.

An example:

PERFORM create_mv(’cs_session_page_requests_mv’, my_query);

39.5.3. Executing a Query with a Single-row Result

The result of a SQL command yielding a single row (possibly of multiple columns) can be assigned to
a record variable, row-type variable, or list of scalar variables. This is done by writing the base SQL
command and adding an INTO clause. For example,

SELECT select_expressions INTO [STRICT] target FROM ...;

INSERT ... RETURNING expressions INTO [STRICT] target;
UPDATE ... RETURNING expressions INTO [STRICT] target;
DELETE ... RETURNING expressions INTO [STRICT] target;

where target can be a record variable, a row variable, or a comma-separated list of simple variables
and record/row fields. PL/pgSQL variables will be substituted into the rest of the query, and the plan
is cached, just as described above for commands that do not return rows. This works for SELECT,
INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE with RETURNING, and utility commands that return row-set results (such as
EXPLAIN). Except for the INTO clause, the SQL command is the same as it would be written outside
PL/pgSQL.

943
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

Tip: Note that this interpretation of SELECT with INTO is quite different from PostgreSQL’s regular
SELECT INTO command, wherein the INTO target is a newly created table. If you want to create
a table from a SELECT result inside a PL/pgSQL function, use the syntax CREATE TABLE ... AS
SELECT.

If a row or a variable list is used as target, the query’s result columns must exactly match the structure
of the target as to number and data types, or else a run-time error occurs. When a record variable is
the target, it automatically configures itself to the row type of the query result columns.
The INTO clause can appear almost anywhere in the SQL command. Customarily it is written either
just before or just after the list of select_expressions in a SELECT command, or at the end of the
command for other command types. It is recommended that you follow this convention in case the
PL/pgSQL parser becomes stricter in future versions.
If STRICT is not specified in the INTO clause, then target will be set to the first row returned by the
query, or to nulls if the query returned no rows. (Note that “the first row” is not well-defined unless
you’ve used ORDER BY.) Any result rows after the first row are discarded. You can check the special
FOUND variable (see Section 39.5.5) to determine whether a row was returned:

SELECT * INTO myrec FROM emp WHERE empname = myname;

IF NOT FOUND THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION ’employee % not found’, myname;
END IF;

If the STRICT option is specified, the query must return exactly one row or a run-time error will be
reported, either NO_DATA_FOUND (no rows) or TOO_MANY_ROWS (more than one row). You can use
an exception block if you wish to catch the error, for example:

BEGIN
SELECT * INTO STRICT myrec FROM emp WHERE empname = myname;
EXCEPTION
WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION ’employee % not found’, myname;
WHEN TOO_MANY_ROWS THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION ’employee % not unique’, myname;
END;

Successful execution of a command with STRICT always sets FOUND to true.

For INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE with RETURNING, PL/pgSQL reports an error for more than one re-
turned row, even when STRICT is not specified. This is because there is no option such as ORDER BY
with which to determine which affected row should be returned.

Note: The STRICT option matches the behavior of Oracle PL/SQL’s SELECT INTO and related
statements.

To handle cases where you need to process multiple result rows from a SQL query, see Section 39.6.4.

39.5.4. Executing Dynamic Commands

Oftentimes you will want to generate dynamic commands inside your PL/pgSQL functions, that
is, commands that will involve different tables or different data types each time they are executed.

944
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

PL/pgSQL’s normal attempts to cache plans for commands (as discussed in Section 39.10.2) will not
work in such scenarios. To handle this sort of problem, the EXECUTE statement is provided:

EXECUTE command-string [ INTO [STRICT] target ] [ USING expression [, ... ] ];

where command-string is an expression yielding a string (of type text) containing the command
to be executed. The optional target is a record variable, a row variable, or a comma-separated list
of simple variables and record/row fields, into which the results of the command will be stored. The
optional USING expressions supply values to be inserted into the command.
No substitution of PL/pgSQL variables is done on the computed command string. Any required vari-
able values must be inserted in the command string as it is constructed; or you can use parameters as
described below.
Also, there is no plan caching for commands executed via EXECUTE. Instead, the command is pre-
pared each time the statement is run. Thus the command string can be dynamically created within the
function to perform actions on different tables and columns.
The INTO clause specifies where the results of a SQL command returning rows should be assigned.
If a row or variable list is provided, it must exactly match the structure of the query’s results (when a
record variable is used, it will configure itself to match the result structure automatically). If multiple
rows are returned, only the first will be assigned to the INTO variable. If no rows are returned, NULL
is assigned to the INTO variable(s). If no INTO clause is specified, the query results are discarded.
If the STRICT option is given, an error is reported unless the query produces exactly one row.
The command string can use parameter values, which are referenced in the command as $1, $2,
etc. These symbols refer to values supplied in the USING clause. This method is often preferable to
inserting data values into the command string as text: it avoids run-time overhead of converting the
values to text and back, and it is much less prone to SQL-injection attacks since there is no need for
quoting or escaping. An example is:

EXECUTE ’SELECT count(*) FROM mytable WHERE inserted_by = $1 AND inserted <= $2’
INTO c
USING checked_user, checked_date;

Note that parameter symbols can only be used for data values — if you want to use dynamically
determined table or column names, you must insert them into the command string textually. For
example, if the preceding query needed to be done against a dynamically selected table, you could do
this:

EXECUTE ’SELECT count(*) FROM ’

|| tabname::regclass
|| ’ WHERE inserted_by = $1 AND inserted <= $2’
INTO c
USING checked_user, checked_date;

Another restriction on parameter symbols is that they only work in SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and
DELETE commands. In other statement types (generically called utility statements), you must insert
values textually even if they are just data values.
An EXECUTE with a simple constant command string and some USING parameters, as in the first
example above, is functionally equivalent to just writing the command directly in PL/pgSQL and
allowing replacement of PL/pgSQL variables to happen automatically. The important difference is
that EXECUTE will re-plan the command on each execution, generating a plan that is specific to the

945
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

current parameter values; whereas PL/pgSQL normally creates a generic plan and caches it for re-
use. In situations where the best plan depends strongly on the parameter values, EXECUTE can be
significantly faster; while when the plan is not sensitive to parameter values, re-planning will be a
waste.
SELECT INTO is not currently supported within EXECUTE; instead, execute a plain SELECT command
and specify INTO as part of the EXECUTE itself.

Note: The PL/pgSQL EXECUTE statement is not related to the EXECUTE SQL statement sup-
ported by the PostgreSQL server. The server’s EXECUTE statement cannot be used directly within
PL/pgSQL functions (and is not needed).

Example 39-1. Quoting Values In Dynamic Queries

When working with dynamic commands you will often have to handle escaping of single quotes. The
recommended method for quoting fixed text in your function body is dollar quoting. (If you have
legacy code that does not use dollar quoting, please refer to the overview in Section 39.11.1, which
can save you some effort when translating said code to a more reasonable scheme.)
Dynamic values that are to be inserted into the constructed query require careful handling since they
might themselves contain quote characters. An example (this assumes that you are using dollar quot-
ing for the function as a whole, so the quote marks need not be doubled):
EXECUTE ’UPDATE tbl SET ’
|| quote_ident(colname)
|| ’ = ’
|| quote_literal(newvalue)
|| ’ WHERE key = ’
|| quote_literal(keyvalue);

This example demonstrates the use of the quote_ident and quote_literal functions (see Sec-
tion 9.4). For safety, expressions containing column or table identifiers should be passed through
quote_ident before insertion in a dynamic query. Expressions containing values that should be lit-
eral strings in the constructed command should be passed through quote_literal. These functions
take the appropriate steps to return the input text enclosed in double or single quotes respectively,
with any embedded special characters properly escaped.
Because quote_literal is labelled STRICT, it will always return null when called with a null
argument. In the above example, if newvalue or keyvalue were null, the entire dynamic query
string would become null, leading to an error from EXECUTE. You can avoid this problem by using
the quote_nullable function, which works the same as quote_literal except that when called
with a null argument it returns the string NULL. For example,
EXECUTE ’UPDATE tbl SET ’
|| quote_ident(colname)
|| ’ = ’
|| quote_nullable(newvalue)
|| ’ WHERE key = ’
|| quote_nullable(keyvalue);
If you are dealing with values that might be null, you should usually use quote_nullable in place
of quote_literal.
As always, care must be taken to ensure that null values in a query do not deliver unintended results.
For example the WHERE clause
’WHERE key = ’ || quote_nullable(keyvalue)

946
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

will never succeed if keyvalue is null, because the result of using the equality operator = with a null
operand is always null. If you wish null to work like an ordinary key value, you would need to rewrite
the above as
’WHERE key IS NOT DISTINCT FROM ’ || quote_nullable(keyvalue)
(At present, IS NOT DISTINCT FROM is handled much less efficiently than =, so don’t do this unless
you must. See Section 9.2 for more information on nulls and IS DISTINCT.)
Note that dollar quoting is only useful for quoting fixed text. It would be a very bad idea to try to write
this example as:
EXECUTE ’UPDATE tbl SET ’
|| quote_ident(colname)
|| ’ = $$’
|| newvalue
|| ’$$ WHERE key = ’
|| quote_literal(keyvalue);
because it would break if the contents of newvalue happened to contain $$. The same objection
would apply to any other dollar-quoting delimiter you might pick. So, to safely quote text that is
not known in advance, you must use quote_literal, quote_nullable, or quote_ident, as
appropriate.
Dynamic SQL statements can also be safely constructed using the format function (see Section 9.4).
For example:
EXECUTE format(’UPDATE tbl SET %I = %L WHERE key = %L’, colname, newvalue, keyvalue);
The format function can be used in conjunction with the USING clause:
EXECUTE format(’UPDATE tbl SET %I = $1 WHERE key = $2’, colname)
USING newvalue, keyvalue;
This form is more efficient, because the parameters newvalue and keyvalue are not converted to
text.

A much larger example of a dynamic command and EXECUTE can be seen in Example 39-8, which
builds and executes a CREATE FUNCTION command to define a new function.

39.5.5. Obtaining the Result Status

There are several ways to determine the effect of a command. The first method is to use the GET
DIAGNOSTICS command, which has the form:

GET DIAGNOSTICS variable = item [ , ... ];

This command allows retrieval of system status indicators. Each item is a key word identifying a
state value to be assigned to the specified variable (which should be of the right data type to receive
it). The currently available status items are ROW_COUNT, the number of rows processed by the last
SQL command sent to the SQL engine, and RESULT_OID, the OID of the last row inserted by the
most recent SQL command. Note that RESULT_OID is only useful after an INSERT command into a
table containing OIDs.
An example:

GET DIAGNOSTICS integer_var = ROW_COUNT;

947
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

The second method to determine the effects of a command is to check the special variable named
FOUND, which is of type boolean. FOUND starts out false within each PL/pgSQL function call. It is
set by each of the following types of statements:

• A SELECT INTO statement sets FOUND true if a row is assigned, false if no row is returned.
• A PERFORM statement sets FOUND true if it produces (and discards) one or more rows, false if no
row is produced.
• UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE statements set FOUND true if at least one row is affected, false if no
row is affected.
• A FETCH statement sets FOUND true if it returns a row, false if no row is returned.
• A MOVE statement sets FOUND true if it successfully repositions the cursor, false otherwise.
• A FOR or FOREACH statement sets FOUND true if it iterates one or more times, else false. FOUND is
set this way when the loop exits; inside the execution of the loop, FOUND is not modified by the
loop statement, although it might be changed by the execution of other statements within the loop
body.
• RETURN QUERY and RETURN QUERY EXECUTE statements set FOUND true if the query returns at
least one row, false if no row is returned.
Other PL/pgSQL statements do not change the state of FOUND. Note in particular that EXECUTE
changes the output of GET DIAGNOSTICS, but does not change FOUND.
FOUND is a local variable within each PL/pgSQL function; any changes to it affect only the current
function.

39.5.6. Doing Nothing At All

Sometimes a placeholder statement that does nothing is useful. For example, it can indicate that one
arm of an if/then/else chain is deliberately empty. For this purpose, use the NULL statement:

NULL;

For example, the following two fragments of code are equivalent:

BEGIN
y := x / 0;
EXCEPTION
WHEN division_by_zero THEN
NULL; -- ignore the error
END;

BEGIN
y := x / 0;
EXCEPTION
WHEN division_by_zero THEN -- ignore the error
END;

Which is preferable is a matter of taste.

Note: In Oracle’s PL/SQL, empty statement lists are not allowed, and so NULL statements are
required for situations such as this. PL/pgSQL allows you to just write nothing, instead.

948
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.6. Control Structures

Control structures are probably the most useful (and important) part of PL/pgSQL. With PL/pgSQL’s
control structures, you can manipulate PostgreSQL data in a very flexible and powerful way.

39.6.1. Returning From a Function

There are two commands available that allow you to return data from a function: RETURN and RETURN
NEXT.

39.6.1.1. RETURN
RETURN expression;

RETURN with an expression terminates the function and returns the value of expression to the caller.
This form is used for PL/pgSQL functions that do not return a set.
When returning a scalar type, any expression can be used. The expression’s result will be automat-
ically cast into the function’s return type as described for assignments. To return a composite (row)
value, you must write a record or row variable as the expression.
If you declared the function with output parameters, write just RETURN with no expression. The cur-
rent values of the output parameter variables will be returned.
If you declared the function to return void, a RETURN statement can be used to exit the function early;
but do not write an expression following RETURN.
The return value of a function cannot be left undefined. If control reaches the end of the top-level
block of the function without hitting a RETURN statement, a run-time error will occur. This restriction
does not apply to functions with output parameters and functions returning void, however. In those
cases a RETURN statement is automatically executed if the top-level block finishes.

39.6.1.2. RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY

RETURN NEXT expression;
RETURN QUERY query ;
RETURN QUERY EXECUTE command-string [ USING expression [, ... ] ];

When a PL/pgSQL function is declared to return SETOF sometype, the procedure to follow is slightly
different. In that case, the individual items to return are specified by a sequence of RETURN NEXT or
RETURN QUERY commands, and then a final RETURN command with no argument is used to indicate
that the function has finished executing. RETURN NEXT can be used with both scalar and composite
data types; with a composite result type, an entire “table” of results will be returned. RETURN QUERY
appends the results of executing a query to the function’s result set. RETURN NEXT and RETURN
QUERY can be freely intermixed in a single set-returning function, in which case their results will be
concatenated.
RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY do not actually return from the function — they simply append
zero or more rows to the function’s result set. Execution then continues with the next statement in

949
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

the PL/pgSQL function. As successive RETURN NEXT or RETURN QUERY commands are executed,
the result set is built up. A final RETURN, which should have no argument, causes control to exit the
function (or you can just let control reach the end of the function).
RETURN QUERY has a variant RETURN QUERY EXECUTE, which specifies the query to be executed
dynamically. Parameter expressions can be inserted into the computed query string via USING, in just
the same way as in the EXECUTE command.
If you declared the function with output parameters, write just RETURN NEXT with no expression. On
each execution, the current values of the output parameter variable(s) will be saved for eventual return
as a row of the result. Note that you must declare the function as returning SETOF record when
there are multiple output parameters, or SETOF sometype when there is just one output parameter of
type sometype, in order to create a set-returning function with output parameters.
Here is an example of a function using RETURN NEXT:

CREATE TABLE foo (fooid INT, foosubid INT, fooname TEXT);

INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1, 2, ’three’);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES (4, 5, ’six’);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION getAllFoo() RETURNS SETOF foo AS

$BODY$
DECLARE
r foo%rowtype;
BEGIN
FOR r IN SELECT * FROM foo
WHERE fooid > 0
LOOP
-- can do some processing here
RETURN NEXT r; -- return current row of SELECT
END LOOP;
RETURN;
END
$BODY$
LANGUAGE ’plpgsql’ ;

SELECT * FROM getallfoo();

Note: The current implementation of RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY stores the entire result set
before returning from the function, as discussed above. That means that if a PL/pgSQL function
produces a very large result set, performance might be poor: data will be written to disk to avoid
memory exhaustion, but the function itself will not return until the entire result set has been gener-
ated. A future version of PL/pgSQL might allow users to define set-returning functions that do not
have this limitation. Currently, the point at which data begins being written to disk is controlled by
the work_mem configuration variable. Administrators who have sufficient memory to store larger
result sets in memory should consider increasing this parameter.

950
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.6.2. Conditionals
IF and CASE statements let you execute alternative commands based on certain conditions. PL/pgSQL
has three forms of IF:

• IF ... THEN

• IF ... THEN ... ELSE

• IF ... THEN ... ELSIF ... THEN ... ELSE

and two forms of CASE:

• CASE ... WHEN ... THEN ... ELSE ... END CASE

• CASE WHEN ... THEN ... ELSE ... END CASE

39.6.2.1. IF-THEN
IF boolean-expression THEN
statements
END IF;

IF-THEN statements are the simplest form of IF. The statements between THEN and END IF will be
executed if the condition is true. Otherwise, they are skipped.
Example:

IF v_user_id <> 0 THEN

UPDATE users SET email = v_email WHERE user_id = v_user_id;
END IF;

39.6.2.2. IF-THEN-ELSE
IF boolean-expression THEN
statements
ELSE
statements
END IF;

IF-THEN-ELSE statements add to IF-THEN by letting you specify an alternative set of statements
that should be executed if the condition is not true. (Note this includes the case where the condition
evaluates to NULL.)
Examples:

IF parentid IS NULL OR parentid = ”

THEN
RETURN fullname;
ELSE
RETURN hp_true_filename(parentid) || ’/’ || fullname;
END IF;

951
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

IF v_count > 0 THEN

INSERT INTO users_count (count) VALUES (v_count);
RETURN ’t’;
ELSE
RETURN ’f’;
END IF;

39.6.2.3. IF-THEN-ELSIF
IF boolean-expression THEN
statements
[ ELSIF boolean-expression THEN
statements
[ ELSIF boolean-expression THEN
statements
...]]
[ ELSE
statements ]
END IF;

Sometimes there are more than just two alternatives. IF-THEN-ELSIF provides a convenient method
of checking several alternatives in turn. The IF conditions are tested successively until the first one
that is true is found. Then the associated statement(s) are executed, after which control passes to
the next statement after END IF. (Any subsequent IF conditions are not tested.) If none of the IF
conditions is true, then the ELSE block (if any) is executed.
Here is an example:

IF number = 0 THEN
result := ’zero’;
ELSIF number > 0 THEN
result := ’positive’;
ELSIF number < 0 THEN
result := ’negative’;
ELSE
-- hmm, the only other possibility is that number is null
result := ’NULL’;
END IF;

The key word ELSIF can also be spelled ELSEIF.

An alternative way of accomplishing the same task is to nest IF-THEN-ELSE statements, as in the
following example:

IF demo_row.sex = ’m’ THEN

pretty_sex := ’man’;
ELSE
IF demo_row.sex = ’f’ THEN
pretty_sex := ’woman’;
END IF;
END IF;

952
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

However, this method requires writing a matching END IF for each IF, so it is much more cumber-
some than using ELSIF when there are many alternatives.

39.6.2.4. Simple CASE

CASE search-expression
WHEN expression [, expression [ ... ]] THEN
statements
[ WHEN expression [, expression [ ... ]] THEN
statements
... ]
[ ELSE
statements ]
END CASE;

The simple form of CASE provides conditional execution based on equality of operands. The
search-expression is evaluated (once) and successively compared to each expression in the
WHEN clauses. If a match is found, then the corresponding statements are executed, and then
control passes to the next statement after END CASE. (Subsequent WHEN expressions are not
evaluated.) If no match is found, the ELSE statements are executed; but if ELSE is not present,
then a CASE_NOT_FOUND exception is raised.
Here is a simple example:

CASE x
WHEN 1, 2 THEN
msg := ’one or two’;
ELSE
msg := ’other value than one or two’;
END CASE;

39.6.2.5. Searched CASE

CASE
WHEN boolean-expression THEN
statements
[ WHEN boolean-expression THEN
statements
... ]
[ ELSE
statements ]
END CASE;

The searched form of CASE provides conditional execution based on truth of Boolean expressions.
Each WHEN clause’s boolean-expression is evaluated in turn, until one is found that yields true.
Then the corresponding statements are executed, and then control passes to the next statement
after END CASE. (Subsequent WHEN expressions are not evaluated.) If no true result is found, the
ELSE statements are executed; but if ELSE is not present, then a CASE_NOT_FOUND exception is
raised.
Here is an example:

CASE

953
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

WHEN x BETWEEN 0 AND 10 THEN

msg := ’value is between zero and ten’;
WHEN x BETWEEN 11 AND 20 THEN
msg := ’value is between eleven and twenty’;
END CASE;

This form of CASE is entirely equivalent to IF-THEN-ELSIF, except for the rule that reaching an
omitted ELSE clause results in an error rather than doing nothing.

39.6.3. Simple Loops

With the LOOP, EXIT, CONTINUE, WHILE, FOR, and FOREACH statements, you can arrange for your
PL/pgSQL function to repeat a series of commands.

39.6.3.1. LOOP
[ <<label>> ]
LOOP
statements
END LOOP [ label ];

LOOP defines an unconditional loop that is repeated indefinitely until terminated by an EXIT or
RETURN statement. The optional label can be used by EXIT and CONTINUE statements within nested
loops to specify which loop those statements refer to.

39.6.3.2. EXIT
EXIT [ label ] [ WHEN boolean-expression ];

If no label is given, the innermost loop is terminated and the statement following END LOOP is
executed next. If label is given, it must be the label of the current or some outer level of nested loop
or block. Then the named loop or block is terminated and control continues with the statement after
the loop’s/block’s corresponding END.
If WHEN is specified, the loop exit occurs only if boolean-expression is true. Otherwise, control
passes to the statement after EXIT.
EXIT can be used with all types of loops; it is not limited to use with unconditional loops.

When used with a BEGIN block, EXIT passes control to the next statement after the end of the block.
Note that a label must be used for this purpose; an unlabelled EXIT is never considered to match a
BEGIN block. (This is a change from pre-8.4 releases of PostgreSQL, which would allow an unlabelled
EXIT to match a BEGIN block.)

Examples:

LOOP
-- some computations
IF count > 0 THEN
EXIT; -- exit loop
END IF;
END LOOP;

954
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

LOOP
-- some computations
EXIT WHEN count > 0; -- same result as previous example
END LOOP;

<<ablock>>
BEGIN
-- some computations
IF stocks > 100000 THEN
EXIT ablock; -- causes exit from the BEGIN block
END IF;
-- computations here will be skipped when stocks > 100000
END;

39.6.3.3. CONTINUE
CONTINUE [ label ] [ WHEN boolean-expression ];

If no label is given, the next iteration of the innermost loop is begun. That is, all statements re-
maining in the loop body are skipped, and control returns to the loop control expression (if any) to
determine whether another loop iteration is needed. If label is present, it specifies the label of the
loop whose execution will be continued.
If WHEN is specified, the next iteration of the loop is begun only if boolean-expression is true.
Otherwise, control passes to the statement after CONTINUE.
CONTINUE can be used with all types of loops; it is not limited to use with unconditional loops.

Examples:

LOOP
-- some computations
EXIT WHEN count > 100;
CONTINUE WHEN count < 50;
-- some computations for count IN [50 .. 100]
END LOOP;

39.6.3.4. WHILE
[ <<label>> ]
WHILE boolean-expression LOOP
statements
END LOOP [ label ];

The WHILE statement repeats a sequence of statements so long as the boolean-expression evalu-
ates to true. The expression is checked just before each entry to the loop body.
For example:

WHILE amount_owed > 0 AND gift_certificate_balance > 0 LOOP

-- some computations here

955
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

END LOOP;

WHILE NOT done LOOP

-- some computations here
END LOOP;

39.6.3.5. FOR (Integer Variant)

[ <<label>> ]
FOR name IN [ REVERSE ] expression .. expression [ BY expression ] LOOP
statements
END LOOP [ label ];

This form of FOR creates a loop that iterates over a range of integer values. The variable name is
automatically defined as type integer and exists only inside the loop (any existing definition of the
variable name is ignored within the loop). The two expressions giving the lower and upper bound of
the range are evaluated once when entering the loop. If the BY clause isn’t specified the iteration step
is 1, otherwise it’s the value specified in the BY clause, which again is evaluated once on loop entry.
If REVERSE is specified then the step value is subtracted, rather than added, after each iteration.
Some examples of integer FOR loops:

FOR i IN 1..10 LOOP

-- i will take on the values 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 within the loop
END LOOP;

FOR i IN REVERSE 10..1 LOOP

-- i will take on the values 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 within the loop
END LOOP;

FOR i IN REVERSE 10..1 BY 2 LOOP

-- i will take on the values 10,8,6,4,2 within the loop
END LOOP;

If the lower bound is greater than the upper bound (or less than, in the REVERSE case), the loop body
is not executed at all. No error is raised.
If a label is attached to the FOR loop then the integer loop variable can be referenced with a qualified
name, using that label.

39.6.4. Looping Through Query Results

Using a different type of FOR loop, you can iterate through the results of a query and manipulate that
data accordingly. The syntax is:

[ <<label>> ]
FOR target IN query LOOP
statements
END LOOP [ label ];

956
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

The target is a record variable, row variable, or comma-separated list of scalar variables. The
target is successively assigned each row resulting from the query and the loop body is executed
for each row. Here is an example:

CREATE FUNCTION cs_refresh_mviews() RETURNS integer AS $$

DECLARE
mviews RECORD;
BEGIN
RAISE NOTICE ’Refreshing materialized views...’;

FOR mviews IN SELECT * FROM cs_materialized_views ORDER BY sort_key LOOP

-- Now "mviews" has one record from cs_materialized_views

RAISE NOTICE ’Refreshing materialized view %s ...’, quote_ident(mviews.mv_name);

EXECUTE ’TRUNCATE TABLE ’ || quote_ident(mviews.mv_name);
EXECUTE ’INSERT INTO ’
|| quote_ident(mviews.mv_name) || ’ ’
|| mviews.mv_query;
END LOOP;

RAISE NOTICE ’Done refreshing materialized views.’;

RETURN 1;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

If the loop is terminated by an EXIT statement, the last assigned row value is still accessible after the
loop.
The query used in this type of FOR statement can be any SQL command that returns rows to the
caller: SELECT is the most common case, but you can also use INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE with a
RETURNING clause. Some utility commands such as EXPLAIN will work too.

PL/pgSQL variables are substituted into the query text, and the query plan is cached for possible
re-use, as discussed in detail in Section 39.10.1 and Section 39.10.2.
The FOR-IN-EXECUTE statement is another way to iterate over rows:

[ <<label>> ]
FOR target IN EXECUTE text_expression [ USING expression [, ... ] ] LOOP
statements
END LOOP [ label ];

This is like the previous form, except that the source query is specified as a string expression, which
is evaluated and replanned on each entry to the FOR loop. This allows the programmer to choose
the speed of a preplanned query or the flexibility of a dynamic query, just as with a plain EXECUTE
statement. As with EXECUTE, parameter values can be inserted into the dynamic command via USING.
Another way to specify the query whose results should be iterated through is to declare it as a cursor.
This is described in Section 39.7.4.

39.6.5. Looping Through Arrays

The FOREACH loop is much like a FOR loop, but instead of iterating through the rows returned by a
SQL query, it iterates through the elements of an array value. (In general, FOREACH is meant for loop-

957
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

ing through components of a composite-valued expression; variants for looping through composites
besides arrays may be added in future.) The FOREACH statement to loop over an array is:

[ <<label>> ]
FOREACH target [ SLICE number ] IN ARRAY expression LOOP
statements
END LOOP [ label ];

Without SLICE, or if SLICE 0 is specified, the loop iterates through individual elements of the array
produced by evaluating the expression. The target variable is assigned each element value in
sequence, and the loop body is executed for each element. Here is an example of looping through the
elements of an integer array:

CREATE FUNCTION sum(int[]) RETURNS int8 AS $$

DECLARE
s int8 := 0;
x int;
BEGIN
FOREACH x IN ARRAY $1
LOOP
s := s + x;
END LOOP;
RETURN s;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

The elements are visited in storage order, regardless of the number of array dimensions. Although the
target is usually just a single variable, it can be a list of variables when looping through an array
of composite values (records). In that case, for each array element, the variables are assigned from
successive columns of the composite value.
With a positive SLICE value, FOREACH iterates through slices of the array rather than single elements.
The SLICE value must be an integer constant not larger than the number of dimensions of the array.
The target variable must be an array, and it receives successive slices of the array value, where each
slice is of the number of dimensions specified by SLICE. Here is an example of iterating through
one-dimensional slices:

CREATE FUNCTION scan_rows(int[]) RETURNS void AS $$

DECLARE
x int[];
BEGIN
FOREACH x SLICE 1 IN ARRAY $1
LOOP
RAISE NOTICE ’row = %’, x;
END LOOP;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT scan_rows(ARRAY[[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9],[10,11,12]]);

NOTICE: row = {1,2,3}

NOTICE: row = {4,5,6}
NOTICE: row = {7,8,9}
NOTICE: row = {10,11,12}

958
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.6.6. Trapping Errors

By default, any error occurring in a PL/pgSQL function aborts execution of the function, and indeed
of the surrounding transaction as well. You can trap errors and recover from them by using a BEGIN
block with an EXCEPTION clause. The syntax is an extension of the normal syntax for a BEGIN block:

[ <<label>> ]
[ DECLARE
declarations ]
BEGIN
statements
EXCEPTION
WHEN condition [ OR condition ... ] THEN
handler_statements
[ WHEN condition [ OR condition ... ] THEN
handler_statements
... ]
END;

If no error occurs, this form of block simply executes all the statements, and then control passes
to the next statement after END. But if an error occurs within the statements, further processing
of the statements is abandoned, and control passes to the EXCEPTION list. The list is searched
for the first condition matching the error that occurred. If a match is found, the corresponding
handler_statements are executed, and then control passes to the next statement after END. If no
match is found, the error propagates out as though the EXCEPTION clause were not there at all: the
error can be caught by an enclosing block with EXCEPTION, or if there is none it aborts processing of
the function.
The condition names can be any of those shown in Appendix A. A category name matches any
error within its category. The special condition name OTHERS matches every error type except
QUERY_CANCELED. (It is possible, but often unwise, to trap QUERY_CANCELED by name.) Condition
names are not case-sensitive. Also, an error condition can be specified by SQLSTATE code; for
example these are equivalent:

WHEN division_by_zero THEN ...

WHEN SQLSTATE ’22012’ THEN ...

If a new error occurs within the selected handler_statements, it cannot be caught by this
EXCEPTION clause, but is propagated out. A surrounding EXCEPTION clause could catch it.
When an error is caught by an EXCEPTION clause, the local variables of the PL/pgSQL function
remain as they were when the error occurred, but all changes to persistent database state within the
block are rolled back. As an example, consider this fragment:

INSERT INTO mytab(firstname, lastname) VALUES(’Tom’, ’Jones’);

BEGIN
UPDATE mytab SET firstname = ’Joe’ WHERE lastname = ’Jones’;
x := x + 1;
y := x / 0;
EXCEPTION

959
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

WHEN division_by_zero THEN

RAISE NOTICE ’caught division_by_zero’;
RETURN x;
END;

When control reaches the assignment to y, it will fail with a division_by_zero error. This will be
caught by the EXCEPTION clause. The value returned in the RETURN statement will be the incremented
value of x, but the effects of the UPDATE command will have been rolled back. The INSERT command
preceding the block is not rolled back, however, so the end result is that the database contains Tom
Jones not Joe Jones.

Tip: A block containing an EXCEPTION clause is significantly more expensive to enter and exit than
a block without one. Therefore, don’t use EXCEPTION without need.

Within an exception handler, the SQLSTATE variable contains the error code that corresponds to the
exception that was raised (refer to Table A-1 for a list of possible error codes). The SQLERRM vari-
able contains the error message associated with the exception. These variables are undefined outside
exception handlers.

Example 39-2. Exceptions with UPDATE/INSERT

This example uses exception handling to perform either UPDATE or INSERT, as appropriate:
CREATE TABLE db (a INT PRIMARY KEY, b TEXT);

CREATE FUNCTION merge_db(key INT, data TEXT) RETURNS VOID AS

$$
BEGIN
LOOP
-- first try to update the key
UPDATE db SET b = data WHERE a = key;
IF found THEN
RETURN;
END IF;
-- not there, so try to insert the key
-- if someone else inserts the same key concurrently,
-- we could get a unique-key failure
BEGIN
INSERT INTO db(a,b) VALUES (key, data);
RETURN;
EXCEPTION WHEN unique_violation THEN
-- Do nothing, and loop to try the UPDATE again.
END;
END LOOP;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT merge_db(1, ’david’);

SELECT merge_db(1, ’dennis’);
This example assumes the unique_violation error is caused by the INSERT, and not by an INSERT
trigger function on the table.

960
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.7. Cursors
Rather than executing a whole query at once, it is possible to set up a cursor that encapsulates the
query, and then read the query result a few rows at a time. One reason for doing this is to avoid
memory overrun when the result contains a large number of rows. (However, PL/pgSQL users do
not normally need to worry about that, since FOR loops automatically use a cursor internally to avoid
memory problems.) A more interesting usage is to return a reference to a cursor that a function has
created, allowing the caller to read the rows. This provides an efficient way to return large row sets
from functions.

39.7.1. Declaring Cursor Variables

All access to cursors in PL/pgSQL goes through cursor variables, which are always of the special
data type refcursor. One way to create a cursor variable is just to declare it as a variable of type
refcursor. Another way is to use the cursor declaration syntax, which in general is:

name [ [ NO ] SCROLL ] CURSOR [ ( arguments ) ] FOR query ;

(FOR can be replaced by IS for Oracle compatibility.) If SCROLL is specified, the cursor will be
capable of scrolling backward; if NO SCROLL is specified, backward fetches will be rejected; if neither
specification appears, it is query-dependent whether backward fetches will be allowed. arguments,
if specified, is a comma-separated list of pairs name datatype that define names to be replaced by
parameter values in the given query. The actual values to substitute for these names will be specified
later, when the cursor is opened.
Some examples:

DECLARE
curs1 refcursor;
curs2 CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM tenk1;
curs3 CURSOR (key integer) IS SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 = key;

All three of these variables have the data type refcursor, but the first can be used with any query,
while the second has a fully specified query already bound to it, and the last has a parameterized
query bound to it. (key will be replaced by an integer parameter value when the cursor is opened.)
The variable curs1 is said to be unbound since it is not bound to any particular query.

39.7.2. Opening Cursors

Before a cursor can be used to retrieve rows, it must be opened. (This is the equivalent action to the
SQL command DECLARE CURSOR.) PL/pgSQL has three forms of the OPEN statement, two of which
use unbound cursor variables while the third uses a bound cursor variable.

Note: Bound cursor variables can also be used without explicitly opening the cursor, via the FOR
statement described in Section 39.7.4.

39.7.2.1. OPEN FOR query

OPEN unbound_cursorvar [ [ NO ] SCROLL ] FOR query ;

961
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

The cursor variable is opened and given the specified query to execute. The cursor cannot be open
already, and it must have been declared as an unbound cursor variable (that is, as a simple refcursor
variable). The query must be a SELECT, or something else that returns rows (such as EXPLAIN). The
query is treated in the same way as other SQL commands in PL/pgSQL: PL/pgSQL variable names are
substituted, and the query plan is cached for possible reuse. When a PL/pgSQL variable is substituted
into the cursor query, the value that is substituted is the one it has at the time of the OPEN; subsequent
changes to the variable will not affect the cursor’s behavior. The SCROLL and NO SCROLL options
have the same meanings as for a bound cursor.
An example:

OPEN curs1 FOR SELECT * FROM foo WHERE key = mykey;

39.7.2.2. OPEN FOR EXECUTE

OPEN unbound_cursorvar [ [ NO ] SCROLL ] FOR EXECUTE query_string
[ USING expression [, ... ] ];

The cursor variable is opened and given the specified query to execute. The cursor cannot be open
already, and it must have been declared as an unbound cursor variable (that is, as a simple refcursor
variable). The query is specified as a string expression, in the same way as in the EXECUTE command.
As usual, this gives flexibility so the query plan can vary from one run to the next (see Section
39.10.2), and it also means that variable substitution is not done on the command string. As with
EXECUTE, parameter values can be inserted into the dynamic command via USING. The SCROLL and
NO SCROLL options have the same meanings as for a bound cursor.
An example:

OPEN curs1 FOR EXECUTE ’SELECT * FROM ’ || quote_ident(tabname)

|| ’ WHERE col1 = $1’ USING keyvalue;

In this example, the table name is inserted into the query textually, so use of quote_ident() is
recommended to guard against SQL injection. The comparison value for col1 is inserted via a USING
parameter, so it needs no quoting.

39.7.2.3. Opening a Bound Cursor

OPEN bound_cursorvar [ ( argument_values ) ];

This form of OPEN is used to open a cursor variable whose query was bound to it when it was declared.
The cursor cannot be open already. A list of actual argument value expressions must appear if and only
if the cursor was declared to take arguments. These values will be substituted in the query. The query
plan for a bound cursor is always considered cacheable; there is no equivalent of EXECUTE in this
case. Notice that SCROLL and NO SCROLL cannot be specified, as the cursor’s scrolling behavior was
already determined.
Note that because variable substitution is done on the bound cursor’s query, there are two ways to
pass values into the cursor: either with an explicit argument to OPEN, or implicitly by referencing
a PL/pgSQL variable in the query. However, only variables declared before the bound cursor was
declared will be substituted into it. In either case the value to be passed is determined at the time of
the OPEN.

962
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

Examples:

OPEN curs2;
OPEN curs3(42);

39.7.3. Using Cursors

Once a cursor has been opened, it can be manipulated with the statements described here.
These manipulations need not occur in the same function that opened the cursor to begin with. You
can return a refcursor value out of a function and let the caller operate on the cursor. (Internally, a
refcursor value is simply the string name of a so-called portal containing the active query for the
cursor. This name can be passed around, assigned to other refcursor variables, and so on, without
disturbing the portal.)
All portals are implicitly closed at transaction end. Therefore a refcursor value is usable to refer-
ence an open cursor only until the end of the transaction.

39.7.3.1. FETCH
FETCH [ direction { FROM | IN } ] cursor INTO target;

FETCH retrieves the next row from the cursor into a target, which might be a row variable, a record
variable, or a comma-separated list of simple variables, just like SELECT INTO. If there is no next
row, the target is set to NULL(s). As with SELECT INTO, the special variable FOUND can be checked
to see whether a row was obtained or not.
The direction clause can be any of the variants allowed in the SQL FETCH command except the
ones that can fetch more than one row; namely, it can be NEXT, PRIOR, FIRST, LAST, ABSOLUTE
count, RELATIVE count, FORWARD, or BACKWARD. Omitting direction is the same as specify-
ing NEXT. direction values that require moving backward are likely to fail unless the cursor was
declared or opened with the SCROLL option.
cursor must be the name of a refcursor variable that references an open cursor portal.
Examples:

FETCH curs1 INTO rowvar;

FETCH curs2 INTO foo, bar, baz;
FETCH LAST FROM curs3 INTO x, y;
FETCH RELATIVE -2 FROM curs4 INTO x;

39.7.3.2. MOVE
MOVE [ direction { FROM | IN } ] cursor ;

MOVE repositions a cursor without retrieving any data. MOVE works exactly like the FETCH command,
except it only repositions the cursor and does not return the row moved to. As with SELECT INTO,
the special variable FOUND can be checked to see whether there was a next row to move to.

963
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

The direction clause can be any of the variants allowed in the SQL FETCH command, namely
NEXT, PRIOR, FIRST, LAST, ABSOLUTE count, RELATIVE count, ALL, FORWARD [ count | ALL ],
or BACKWARD [ count | ALL ]. Omitting direction is the same as specifying NEXT. direction
values that require moving backward are likely to fail unless the cursor was declared or opened with
the SCROLL option.
Examples:

MOVE curs1;
MOVE LAST FROM curs3;
MOVE RELATIVE -2 FROM curs4;
MOVE FORWARD 2 FROM curs4;

39.7.3.3. UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF

UPDATE table SET ... WHERE CURRENT OF cursor ;
DELETE FROM table WHERE CURRENT OF cursor ;

When a cursor is positioned on a table row, that row can be updated or deleted using the cursor to
identify the row. There are restrictions on what the cursor’s query can be (in particular, no grouping)
and it’s best to use FOR UPDATE in the cursor. For more information see the DECLARE reference
page.
An example:

UPDATE foo SET dataval = myval WHERE CURRENT OF curs1;

39.7.3.4. CLOSE
CLOSE cursor ;

CLOSE closes the portal underlying an open cursor. This can be used to release resources earlier than
end of transaction, or to free up the cursor variable to be opened again.
An example:

CLOSE curs1;

39.7.3.5. Returning Cursors

PL/pgSQL functions can return cursors to the caller. This is useful to return multiple rows or columns,
especially with very large result sets. To do this, the function opens the cursor and returns the cursor
name to the caller (or simply opens the cursor using a portal name specified by or otherwise known
to the caller). The caller can then fetch rows from the cursor. The cursor can be closed by the caller,
or it will be closed automatically when the transaction closes.
The portal name used for a cursor can be specified by the programmer or automatically generated. To
specify a portal name, simply assign a string to the refcursor variable before opening it. The string

964
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

value of the refcursor variable will be used by OPEN as the name of the underlying portal. However,
if the refcursor variable is null, OPEN automatically generates a name that does not conflict with
any existing portal, and assigns it to the refcursor variable.

Note: A bound cursor variable is initialized to the string value representing its name, so that the
portal name is the same as the cursor variable name, unless the programmer overrides it by
assignment before opening the cursor. But an unbound cursor variable defaults to the null value
initially, so it will receive an automatically-generated unique name, unless overridden.

The following example shows one way a cursor name can be supplied by the caller:

CREATE TABLE test (col text);

INSERT INTO test VALUES (’123’);

CREATE FUNCTION reffunc(refcursor) RETURNS refcursor AS ’

BEGIN
OPEN $1 FOR SELECT col FROM test;
RETURN $1;
END;
’ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

BEGIN;
SELECT reffunc(’funccursor’);
FETCH ALL IN funccursor;
COMMIT;

The following example uses automatic cursor name generation:

CREATE FUNCTION reffunc2() RETURNS refcursor AS ’

DECLARE
ref refcursor;
BEGIN
OPEN ref FOR SELECT col FROM test;
RETURN ref;
END;
’ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

-- need to be in a transaction to use cursors.

BEGIN;
SELECT reffunc2();

reffunc2
--------------------
<unnamed cursor 1>
(1 row)

FETCH ALL IN "<unnamed cursor 1>";

COMMIT;

The following example shows one way to return multiple cursors from a single function:

CREATE FUNCTION myfunc(refcursor, refcursor) RETURNS SETOF refcursor AS $$

BEGIN

965
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

OPEN $1 FOR SELECT * FROM table_1;

RETURN NEXT $1;
OPEN $2 FOR SELECT * FROM table_2;
RETURN NEXT $2;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

-- need to be in a transaction to use cursors.

BEGIN;

SELECT * FROM myfunc(’a’, ’b’);

FETCH ALL FROM a;

FETCH ALL FROM b;
COMMIT;

39.7.4. Looping Through a Cursor’s Result

There is a variant of the FOR statement that allows iterating through the rows returned by a cursor.
The syntax is:

[ <<label>> ]
FOR recordvar IN bound_cursorvar [ ( argument_values ) ] LOOP
statements
END LOOP [ label ];

The cursor variable must have been bound to some query when it was declared, and it cannot be
open already. The FOR statement automatically opens the cursor, and it closes the cursor again when
the loop exits. A list of actual argument value expressions must appear if and only if the cursor was
declared to take arguments. These values will be substituted in the query, in just the same way as
during an OPEN. The variable recordvar is automatically defined as type record and exists only
inside the loop (any existing definition of the variable name is ignored within the loop). Each row
returned by the cursor is successively assigned to this record variable and the loop body is executed.

39.8. Errors and Messages

Use the RAISE statement to report messages and raise errors.

RAISE [ level ] ’format’ [, expression [, ... ]] [ USING option = expression [, ... ] ];

RAISE [ level ] condition_name [ USING option = expression [, ... ] ];
RAISE [ level ] SQLSTATE ’sqlstate’ [ USING option = expression [, ... ] ];
RAISE [ level ] USING option = expression [, ... ];
RAISE ;

The level option specifies the error severity. Allowed levels are DEBUG, LOG, INFO, NOTICE,
WARNING, and EXCEPTION, with EXCEPTION being the default. EXCEPTION raises an error (which
normally aborts the current transaction); the other levels only generate messages of different priority
levels. Whether messages of a particular priority are reported to the client, written to the server log,

966
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

or both is controlled by the log_min_messages and client_min_messages configuration variables.

See Chapter 18 for more information.
After level if any, you can write a format (which must be a simple string literal, not an expression).
The format string specifies the error message text to be reported. The format string can be followed by
optional argument expressions to be inserted into the message. Inside the format string, % is replaced
by the string representation of the next optional argument’s value. Write %% to emit a literal %.
In this example, the value of v_job_id will replace the % in the string:

RAISE NOTICE ’Calling cs_create_job(%)’, v_job_id;

You can attach additional information to the error report by writing USING followed by option =
expression items. The allowed option keywords are MESSAGE, DETAIL, HINT, and ERRCODE,
while each expression can be any string-valued expression. MESSAGE sets the error message text
(this option can’t be used in the form of RAISE that includes a format string before USING). DETAIL
supplies an error detail message, while HINT supplies a hint message. ERRCODE specifies the error
code (SQLSTATE) to report, either by condition name as shown in Appendix A, or directly as a
five-character SQLSTATE code.
This example will abort the transaction with the given error message and hint:

RAISE EXCEPTION ’Nonexistent ID --> %’, user_id

USING HINT = ’Please check your user ID’;

These two examples show equivalent ways of setting the SQLSTATE:

RAISE ’Duplicate user ID: %’, user_id USING ERRCODE = ’unique_violation’;

RAISE ’Duplicate user ID: %’, user_id USING ERRCODE = ’23505’;

There is a second RAISE syntax in which the main argument is the condition name or SQLSTATE to
be reported, for example:

RAISE division_by_zero;
RAISE SQLSTATE ’22012’;

In this syntax, USING can be used to supply a custom error message, detail, or hint. Another way to
do the earlier example is

RAISE unique_violation USING MESSAGE = ’Duplicate user ID: ’ || user_id;

Still another variant is to write RAISE USING or RAISE level USING and put everything else into
the USING list.
The last variant of RAISE has no parameters at all. This form can only be used inside a BEGIN block’s
EXCEPTION clause; it causes the error currently being handled to be re-thrown.

Note: Before PostgreSQL 9.1, RAISE without parameters was interpreted as re-throwing the error
from the block containing the active exception handler. Thus an EXCEPTION clause nested within
that handler could not catch it, even if the RAISE was within the nested EXCEPTION clause’s block.
This was deemed surprising as well as being incompatible with Oracle’s PL/SQL.

967
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

If no condition name nor SQLSTATE is specified in a RAISE EXCEPTION command, the default is
to use RAISE_EXCEPTION (P0001). If no message text is specified, the default is to use the condition
name or SQLSTATE as message text.

Note: When specifying an error code by SQLSTATE code, you are not limited to the predefined
error codes, but can select any error code consisting of five digits and/or upper-case ASCII letters,
other than 00000. It is recommended that you avoid throwing error codes that end in three zeroes,
because these are category codes and can only be trapped by trapping the whole category.

39.9. Trigger Procedures

PL/pgSQL can be used to define trigger procedures. A trigger procedure is created with the CREATE
FUNCTION command, declaring it as a function with no arguments and a return type of trigger.
Note that the function must be declared with no arguments even if it expects to receive arguments
specified in CREATE TRIGGER — trigger arguments are passed via TG_ARGV, as described below.
When a PL/pgSQL function is called as a trigger, several special variables are created automatically
in the top-level block. They are:

NEW

Data type RECORD; variable holding the new database row for INSERT/UPDATE operations in
row-level triggers. This variable is NULL in statement-level triggers and for DELETE operations.
OLD

Data type RECORD; variable holding the old database row for UPDATE/DELETE operations in
row-level triggers. This variable is NULL in statement-level triggers and for INSERT operations.
TG_NAME

Data type name; variable that contains the name of the trigger actually fired.
TG_WHEN

Data type text; a string of BEFORE, AFTER, or INSTEAD OF, depending on the trigger’s defini-
tion.
TG_LEVEL

Data type text; a string of either ROW or STATEMENT depending on the trigger’s definition.
TG_OP

Data type text; a string of INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or TRUNCATE telling for which operation
the trigger was fired.
TG_RELID

Data type oid; the object ID of the table that caused the trigger invocation.
TG_RELNAME

Data type name; the name of the table that caused the trigger invocation. This is now deprecated,
and could disappear in a future release. Use TG_TABLE_NAME instead.

968
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

TG_TABLE_NAME
Data type name; the name of the table that caused the trigger invocation.
TG_TABLE_SCHEMA

Data type name; the name of the schema of the table that caused the trigger invocation.
TG_NARGS
Data type integer; the number of arguments given to the trigger procedure in the CREATE
TRIGGER statement.

TG_ARGV[]
Data type array of text; the arguments from the CREATE TRIGGER statement. The index counts
from 0. Invalid indexes (less than 0 or greater than or equal to tg_nargs) result in a null value.

A trigger function must return either NULL or a record/row value having exactly the structure of the
table the trigger was fired for.
Row-level triggers fired BEFORE can return null to signal the trigger manager to skip the rest of the
operation for this row (i.e., subsequent triggers are not fired, and the INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE does
not occur for this row). If a nonnull value is returned then the operation proceeds with that row value.
Returning a row value different from the original value of NEW alters the row that will be inserted or
updated. Thus, if the trigger function wants the triggering action to succeed normally without altering
the row value, NEW (or a value equal thereto) has to be returned. To alter the row to be stored, it is
possible to replace single values directly in NEW and return the modified NEW, or to build a complete
new record/row to return. In the case of a before-trigger on DELETE, the returned value has no direct
effect, but it has to be nonnull to allow the trigger action to proceed. Note that NEW is null in DELETE
triggers, so returning that is usually not sensible. The usual idiom in DELETE triggers is to return OLD.
INSTEAD OF triggers (which are always row-level triggers, and may only be used on views) can
return null to signal that they did not perform any updates, and that the rest of the operation for
this row should be skipped (i.e., subsequent triggers are not fired, and the row is not counted in the
rows-affected status for the surrounding INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE). Otherwise a nonnull value should
be returned, to signal that the trigger performed the requested operation. For INSERT and UPDATE
operations, the return value should be NEW, which the trigger function may modify to support INSERT
RETURNING and UPDATE RETURNING (this will also affect the row value passed to any subsequent
triggers). For DELETE operations, the return value should be OLD.
The return value of a row-level trigger fired AFTER or a statement-level trigger fired BEFORE or AFTER
is always ignored; it might as well be null. However, any of these types of triggers might still abort
the entire operation by raising an error.
Example 39-3 shows an example of a trigger procedure in PL/pgSQL.

Example 39-3. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Procedure

This example trigger ensures that any time a row is inserted or updated in the table, the current user
name and time are stamped into the row. And it checks that an employee’s name is given and that the
salary is a positive value.
CREATE TABLE emp (
empname text,
salary integer,
last_date timestamp,
last_user text
);

969
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

CREATE FUNCTION emp_stamp() RETURNS trigger AS $emp_stamp$

BEGIN
-- Check that empname and salary are given
IF NEW.empname IS NULL THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION ’empname cannot be null’;
END IF;
IF NEW.salary IS NULL THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION ’% cannot have null salary’, NEW.empname;
END IF;

-- Who works for us when she must pay for it?

IF NEW.salary < 0 THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION ’% cannot have a negative salary’, NEW.empname;
END IF;

-- Remember who changed the payroll when

NEW.last_date := current_timestamp;
NEW.last_user := current_user;
RETURN NEW;
END;
$emp_stamp$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER emp_stamp BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON emp

FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE emp_stamp();

Another way to log changes to a table involves creating a new table that holds a row for each insert,
update, or delete that occurs. This approach can be thought of as auditing changes to a table. Example
39-4 shows an example of an audit trigger procedure in PL/pgSQL.

Example 39-4. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Procedure For Auditing

This example trigger ensures that any insert, update or delete of a row in the emp table is recorded
(i.e., audited) in the emp_audit table. The current time and user name are stamped into the row,
together with the type of operation performed on it.
CREATE TABLE emp (
empname text NOT NULL,
salary integer
);

CREATE TABLE emp_audit(

operation char(1) NOT NULL,
stamp timestamp NOT NULL,
userid text NOT NULL,
empname text NOT NULL,
salary integer
);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION process_emp_audit() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $emp_audit$

BEGIN
--
-- Create a row in emp_audit to reflect the operation performed on emp,
-- make use of the special variable TG_OP to work out the operation.
--
IF (TG_OP = ’DELETE’) THEN
INSERT INTO emp_audit SELECT ’D’, now(), user, OLD.*;

970
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

RETURN OLD;
ELSIF (TG_OP = ’UPDATE’) THEN
INSERT INTO emp_audit SELECT ’U’, now(), user, NEW.*;
RETURN NEW;
ELSIF (TG_OP = ’INSERT’) THEN
INSERT INTO emp_audit SELECT ’I’, now(), user, NEW.*;
RETURN NEW;
END IF;
RETURN NULL; -- result is ignored since this is an AFTER trigger
END;
$emp_audit$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER emp_audit

AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON emp
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE process_emp_audit();

A variation of the previous example uses a view joining the main table to the audit table, to show
when each entry was last modified. This approach still records the full audit trail of changes to the
table, but also presents a simplified view of the audit trail, showing just the last modified timestamp
derived from the audit trail for each entry. Example 39-5 shows an example of an audit trigger on a
view in PL/pgSQL.

Example 39-5. A PL/pgSQL View Trigger Procedure For Auditing

This example uses a trigger on the view to make it updatable, and ensure that any insert, update or
delete of a row in the view is recorded (i.e., audited) in the emp_audit table. The current time and
user name are recorded, together with the type of operation performed, and the view displays the last
modified time of each row.
CREATE TABLE emp (
empname text PRIMARY KEY,
salary integer
);

CREATE TABLE emp_audit(

operation char(1) NOT NULL,
userid text NOT NULL,
empname text NOT NULL,
salary integer,
stamp timestamp NOT NULL
);

CREATE VIEW emp_view AS

SELECT e.empname,
e.salary,
max(ea.stamp) AS last_updated
FROM emp e
LEFT JOIN emp_audit ea ON ea.empname = e.empname
GROUP BY 1, 2;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION update_emp_view() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$

BEGIN
--
-- Perform the required operation on emp, and create a row in emp_audit
-- to reflect the change made to emp.
--
IF (TG_OP = ’DELETE’) THEN

971
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

DELETE FROM emp WHERE empname = OLD.empname;

IF NOT FOUND THEN RETURN NULL; END IF;

OLD.last_updated = now();
INSERT INTO emp_audit VALUES(’D’, user, OLD.*);
RETURN OLD;
ELSIF (TG_OP = ’UPDATE’) THEN
UPDATE emp SET salary = NEW.salary WHERE empname = OLD.empname;
IF NOT FOUND THEN RETURN NULL; END IF;

NEW.last_updated = now();
INSERT INTO emp_audit VALUES(’U’, user, NEW.*);
RETURN NEW;
ELSIF (TG_OP = ’INSERT’) THEN
INSERT INTO emp VALUES(NEW.empname, NEW.salary);

NEW.last_updated = now();
INSERT INTO emp_audit VALUES(’I’, user, NEW.*);
RETURN NEW;
END IF;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER emp_audit

INSTEAD OF INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON emp_view
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE update_emp_view();

One use of triggers is to maintain a summary table of another table. The resulting summary can be
used in place of the original table for certain queries — often with vastly reduced run times. This
technique is commonly used in Data Warehousing, where the tables of measured or observed data
(called fact tables) might be extremely large. Example 39-6 shows an example of a trigger procedure
in PL/pgSQL that maintains a summary table for a fact table in a data warehouse.

Example 39-6. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Procedure For Maintaining A Summary Table

The schema detailed here is partly based on the Grocery Store example from The Data Warehouse
Toolkit by Ralph Kimball.
--
-- Main tables - time dimension and sales fact.
--
CREATE TABLE time_dimension (
time_key integer NOT NULL,
day_of_week integer NOT NULL,
day_of_month integer NOT NULL,
month integer NOT NULL,
quarter integer NOT NULL,
year integer NOT NULL
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX time_dimension_key ON time_dimension(time_key);

CREATE TABLE sales_fact (

time_key integer NOT NULL,
product_key integer NOT NULL,
store_key integer NOT NULL,
amount_sold numeric(12,2) NOT NULL,
units_sold integer NOT NULL,

972
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

amount_cost numeric(12,2) NOT NULL

);
CREATE INDEX sales_fact_time ON sales_fact(time_key);

--
-- Summary table - sales by time.
--
CREATE TABLE sales_summary_bytime (
time_key integer NOT NULL,
amount_sold numeric(15,2) NOT NULL,
units_sold numeric(12) NOT NULL,
amount_cost numeric(15,2) NOT NULL
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX sales_summary_bytime_key ON sales_summary_bytime(time_key);

--
-- Function and trigger to amend summarized column(s) on UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE.
--
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION maint_sales_summary_bytime() RETURNS TRIGGER
AS $maint_sales_summary_bytime$
DECLARE
delta_time_key integer;
delta_amount_sold numeric(15,2);
delta_units_sold numeric(12);
delta_amount_cost numeric(15,2);
BEGIN

-- Work out the increment/decrement amount(s).

IF (TG_OP = ’DELETE’) THEN

delta_time_key = OLD.time_key;
delta_amount_sold = -1 * OLD.amount_sold;
delta_units_sold = -1 * OLD.units_sold;
delta_amount_cost = -1 * OLD.amount_cost;

ELSIF (TG_OP = ’UPDATE’) THEN

-- forbid updates that change the time_key -

-- (probably not too onerous, as DELETE + INSERT is how most
-- changes will be made).
IF ( OLD.time_key != NEW.time_key) THEN
RAISE EXCEPTION ’Update of time_key : % -> % not allowed’,
OLD.time_key, NEW.time_key;
END IF;

delta_time_key = OLD.time_key;
delta_amount_sold = NEW.amount_sold - OLD.amount_sold;
delta_units_sold = NEW.units_sold - OLD.units_sold;
delta_amount_cost = NEW.amount_cost - OLD.amount_cost;

ELSIF (TG_OP = ’INSERT’) THEN

delta_time_key = NEW.time_key;
delta_amount_sold = NEW.amount_sold;
delta_units_sold = NEW.units_sold;
delta_amount_cost = NEW.amount_cost;

973
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

END IF;

-- Insert or update the summary row with the new values.

<<insert_update>>
LOOP
UPDATE sales_summary_bytime
SET amount_sold = amount_sold + delta_amount_sold,
units_sold = units_sold + delta_units_sold,
amount_cost = amount_cost + delta_amount_cost
WHERE time_key = delta_time_key;

EXIT insert_update WHEN found;

BEGIN
INSERT INTO sales_summary_bytime (
time_key,
amount_sold,
units_sold,
amount_cost)
VALUES (
delta_time_key,
delta_amount_sold,
delta_units_sold,
delta_amount_cost
);

EXIT insert_update;

EXCEPTION
WHEN UNIQUE_VIOLATION THEN
-- do nothing
END;
END LOOP insert_update;

RETURN NULL;

END;
$maint_sales_summary_bytime$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER maint_sales_summary_bytime

AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON sales_fact
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE maint_sales_summary_bytime();

INSERT INTO sales_fact VALUES(1,1,1,10,3,15);

INSERT INTO sales_fact VALUES(1,2,1,20,5,35);
INSERT INTO sales_fact VALUES(2,2,1,40,15,135);
INSERT INTO sales_fact VALUES(2,3,1,10,1,13);
SELECT * FROM sales_summary_bytime;
DELETE FROM sales_fact WHERE product_key = 1;
SELECT * FROM sales_summary_bytime;
UPDATE sales_fact SET units_sold = units_sold * 2;
SELECT * FROM sales_summary_bytime;

974
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

39.10. PL/pgSQL Under the Hood

This section discusses some implementation details that are frequently important for PL/pgSQL users
to know.

39.10.1. Variable Substitution

SQL statements and expressions within a PL/pgSQL function can refer to variables and parameters of
the function. Behind the scenes, PL/pgSQL substitutes query parameters for such references. Parame-
ters will only be substituted in places where a parameter or column reference is syntactically allowed.
As an extreme case, consider this example of poor programming style:

INSERT INTO foo (foo) VALUES (foo);

The first occurrence of foo must syntactically be a table name, so it will not be substituted, even if
the function has a variable named foo. The second occurrence must be the name of a column of the
table, so it will not be substituted either. Only the third occurrence is a candidate to be a reference to
the function’s variable.

Note: PostgreSQL versions before 9.0 would try to substitute the variable in all three cases,
leading to syntax errors.

Since the names of variables are syntactically no different from the names of table columns, there can
be ambiguity in statements that also refer to tables: is a given name meant to refer to a table column,
or a variable? Let’s change the previous example to

INSERT INTO dest (col) SELECT foo + bar FROM src;

Here, dest and src must be table names, and col must be a column of dest, but foo and bar might
reasonably be either variables of the function or columns of src.
By default, PL/pgSQL will report an error if a name in a SQL statement could refer to either a variable
or a table column. You can fix such a problem by renaming the variable or column, or by qualifying
the ambiguous reference, or by telling PL/pgSQL which interpretation to prefer.
The simplest solution is to rename the variable or column. A common coding rule is to use a different
naming convention for PL/pgSQL variables than you use for column names. For example, if you
consistently name function variables v_something while none of your column names start with v_,
no conflicts will occur.
Alternatively you can qualify ambiguous references to make them clear. In the above example,
src.foo would be an unambiguous reference to the table column. To create an unambiguous
reference to a variable, declare it in a labeled block and use the block’s label (see Section 39.2). For
example,

<<block>>
DECLARE
foo int;
BEGIN
foo := ...;
INSERT INTO dest (col) SELECT block.foo + bar FROM src;

975
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

Here block.foo means the variable even if there is a column foo in src. Function parameters, as
well as special variables such as FOUND, can be qualified by the function’s name, because they are
implicitly declared in an outer block labeled with the function’s name.
Sometimes it is impractical to fix all the ambiguous references in a large body of PL/pgSQL code. In
such cases you can specify that PL/pgSQL should resolve ambiguous references as the variable (which
is compatible with PL/pgSQL’s behavior before PostgreSQL 9.0), or as the table column (which is
compatible with some other systems such as Oracle).
To change this behavior on a system-wide basis, set the configuration parameter
plpgsql.variable_conflict to one of error, use_variable, or use_column (where error
is the factory default). This parameter affects subsequent compilations of statements in PL/pgSQL
functions, but not statements already compiled in the current session. To set the parameter before
PL/pgSQL has been loaded, it is necessary to have added “plpgsql” to the custom_variable_classes
list in postgresql.conf. Because changing this setting can cause unexpected changes in the
behavior of PL/pgSQL functions, it can only be changed by a superuser.
You can also set the behavior on a function-by-function basis, by inserting one of these special com-
mands at the start of the function text:

#variable_conflict error
#variable_conflict use_variable
#variable_conflict use_column

These commands affect only the function they are written in, and override the setting of
plpgsql.variable_conflict. An example is

CREATE FUNCTION stamp_user(id int, comment text) RETURNS void AS $$

#variable_conflict use_variable
DECLARE
curtime timestamp := now();
BEGIN
UPDATE users SET last_modified = curtime, comment = comment
WHERE users.id = id;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

In the UPDATE command, curtime, comment, and id will refer to the function’s variable and param-
eters whether or not users has columns of those names. Notice that we had to qualify the reference
to users.id in the WHERE clause to make it refer to the table column. But we did not have to qualify
the reference to comment as a target in the UPDATE list, because syntactically that must be a column
of users. We could write the same function without depending on the variable_conflict setting
in this way:

CREATE FUNCTION stamp_user(id int, comment text) RETURNS void AS $$

<<fn>>
DECLARE
curtime timestamp := now();
BEGIN
UPDATE users SET last_modified = fn.curtime, comment = stamp_user.comment
WHERE users.id = stamp_user.id;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

976
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

Variable substitution does not happen in the command string given to EXECUTE or one of its variants.
If you need to insert a varying value into such a command, do so as part of constructing the string
value, or use USING, as illustrated in Section 39.5.4.
Variable substitution currently works only in SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands,
because the main SQL engine allows query parameters only in these commands. To use a non-constant
name or value in other statement types (generically called utility statements), you must construct the
utility statement as a string and EXECUTE it.

39.10.2. Plan Caching

The PL/pgSQL interpreter parses the function’s source text and produces an internal binary instruction
tree the first time the function is called (within each session). The instruction tree fully translates
the PL/pgSQL statement structure, but individual SQL expressions and SQL commands used in the
function are not translated immediately.
As each expression and SQL command is first executed in the function, the PL/pgSQL interpreter
creates a prepared execution plan (using the SPI manager’s SPI_prepare and SPI_saveplan func-
tions). Subsequent visits to that expression or command reuse the prepared plan. Thus, a function
with conditional code that contains many statements for which execution plans might be required will
only prepare and save those plans that are really used during the lifetime of the database connection.
This can substantially reduce the total amount of time required to parse and generate execution plans
for the statements in a PL/pgSQL function. A disadvantage is that errors in a specific expression or
command cannot be detected until that part of the function is reached in execution. (Trivial syntax
errors will be detected during the initial parsing pass, but anything deeper will not be detected until
execution.)
A saved plan will be re-planned automatically if there is any schema change to any table used in the
query, or if any user-defined function used in the query is redefined. This makes the re-use of prepared
plans transparent in most cases, but there are corner cases where a stale plan might be re-used. An
example is that dropping and re-creating a user-defined operator won’t affect already-cached plans;
they’ll continue to call the original operator’s underlying function, if that has not been changed. When
necessary, the cache can be flushed by starting a fresh database session.
Because PL/pgSQL saves execution plans in this way, SQL commands that appear directly in a
PL/pgSQL function must refer to the same tables and columns on every execution; that is, you cannot
use a parameter as the name of a table or column in an SQL command. To get around this restriction,
you can construct dynamic commands using the PL/pgSQL EXECUTE statement — at the price of
constructing a new execution plan on every execution.
Another important point is that the prepared plans are parameterized to allow the values of PL/pgSQL
variables to change from one use to the next, as discussed in detail above. Sometimes this means
that a plan is less efficient than it would be if generated for a specific variable value. As an example,
consider

SELECT * INTO myrec FROM dictionary WHERE word LIKE search_term;

where search_term is a PL/pgSQL variable. The cached plan for this query will never use an index
on word, since the planner cannot assume that the LIKE pattern will be left-anchored at run time.
To use an index the query must be planned with a specific constant LIKE pattern provided. This is
another situation where EXECUTE can be used to force a new plan to be generated for each execution.
The mutable nature of record variables presents another problem in this connection. When fields of
a record variable are used in expressions or statements, the data types of the fields must not change
from one call of the function to the next, since each expression will be planned using the data type

977
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

that is present when the expression is first reached. EXECUTE can be used to get around this problem
when necessary.
If the same function is used as a trigger for more than one table, PL/pgSQL prepares and caches
plans independently for each such table — that is, there is a cache for each trigger function and table
combination, not just for each function. This alleviates some of the problems with varying data types;
for instance, a trigger function will be able to work successfully with a column named key even if it
happens to have different types in different tables.
Likewise, functions having polymorphic argument types have a separate plan cache for each combi-
nation of actual argument types they have been invoked for, so that data type differences do not cause
unexpected failures.
Plan caching can sometimes have surprising effects on the interpretation of time-sensitive values. For
example there is a difference between what these two functions do:

CREATE FUNCTION logfunc1(logtxt text) RETURNS void AS $$

BEGIN
INSERT INTO logtable VALUES (logtxt, ’now’);
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

and:

CREATE FUNCTION logfunc2(logtxt text) RETURNS void AS $$

DECLARE
curtime timestamp;
BEGIN
curtime := ’now’;
INSERT INTO logtable VALUES (logtxt, curtime);
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

In the case of logfunc1, the PostgreSQL main parser knows when preparing the plan for the INSERT
that the string ’now’ should be interpreted as timestamp, because the target column of logtable
is of that type. Thus, ’now’ will be converted to a constant when the INSERT is planned, and then
used in all invocations of logfunc1 during the lifetime of the session. Needless to say, this isn’t what
the programmer wanted.
In the case of logfunc2, the PostgreSQL main parser does not know what type ’now’ should become
and therefore it returns a data value of type text containing the string now. During the ensuing as-
signment to the local variable curtime, the PL/pgSQL interpreter casts this string to the timestamp
type by calling the text_out and timestamp_in functions for the conversion. So, the computed
time stamp is updated on each execution as the programmer expects.

39.11. Tips for Developing in PL/pgSQL

One good way to develop in PL/pgSQL is to use the text editor of your choice to create your functions,
and in another window, use psql to load and test those functions. If you are doing it this way, it is a
good idea to write the function using CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION. That way you can just reload
the file to update the function definition. For example:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION testfunc(integer) RETURNS integer AS $$

978
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

....
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

While running psql, you can load or reload such a function definition file with:

\i filename.sql

and then immediately issue SQL commands to test the function.

Another good way to develop in PL/pgSQL is with a GUI database access tool that facilitates de-
velopment in a procedural language. One example of such a tool is pgAdmin, although others exist.
These tools often provide convenient features such as escaping single quotes and making it easier to
recreate and debug functions.

39.11.1. Handling of Quotation Marks

The code of a PL/pgSQL function is specified in CREATE FUNCTION as a string literal. If you write
the string literal in the ordinary way with surrounding single quotes, then any single quotes inside
the function body must be doubled; likewise any backslashes must be doubled (assuming escape
string syntax is used). Doubling quotes is at best tedious, and in more complicated cases the code can
become downright incomprehensible, because you can easily find yourself needing half a dozen or
more adjacent quote marks. It’s recommended that you instead write the function body as a “dollar-
quoted” string literal (see Section 4.1.2.4). In the dollar-quoting approach, you never double any quote
marks, but instead take care to choose a different dollar-quoting delimiter for each level of nesting
you need. For example, you might write the CREATE FUNCTION command as:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION testfunc(integer) RETURNS integer AS $PROC$

....
$PROC$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Within this, you might use quote marks for simple literal strings in SQL commands and $$ to delimit
fragments of SQL commands that you are assembling as strings. If you need to quote text that includes
$$, you could use $Q$, and so on.
The following chart shows what you have to do when writing quote marks without dollar quoting. It
might be useful when translating pre-dollar quoting code into something more comprehensible.

1 quotation mark
To begin and end the function body, for example:
CREATE FUNCTION foo() RETURNS integer AS ’
....
’ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
Anywhere within a single-quoted function body, quote marks must appear in pairs.
2 quotation marks
For string literals inside the function body, for example:
a_output := ”Blah”;
SELECT * FROM users WHERE f_name=”foobar”;
In the dollar-quoting approach, you’d just write:
a_output := ’Blah’;
SELECT * FROM users WHERE f_name=’foobar’;
which is exactly what the PL/pgSQL parser would see in either case.

979
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

4 quotation marks
When you need a single quotation mark in a string constant inside the function body, for example:
a_output := a_output || ” AND name LIKE ””foobar”” AND xyz”
The value actually appended to a_output would be: AND name LIKE ’foobar’ AND xyz.
In the dollar-quoting approach, you’d write:
a_output := a_output || $$ AND name LIKE ’foobar’ AND xyz$$
being careful that any dollar-quote delimiters around this are not just $$.
6 quotation marks
When a single quotation mark in a string inside the function body is adjacent to the end of that
string constant, for example:
a_output := a_output || ” AND name LIKE ””foobar”””
The value appended to a_output would then be: AND name LIKE ’foobar’.
In the dollar-quoting approach, this becomes:
a_output := a_output || $$ AND name LIKE ’foobar’$$
10 quotation marks
When you want two single quotation marks in a string constant (which accounts for 8 quotation
marks) and this is adjacent to the end of that string constant (2 more). You will probably only
need that if you are writing a function that generates other functions, as in Example 39-8. For
example:
a_output := a_output || ” if v_” ||
referrer_keys.kind || ” like ”””””
|| referrer_keys.key_string || ”””””
then return ””” || referrer_keys.referrer_type
|| ”””; end if;”;
The value of a_output would then be:
if v_... like ”...” then return ”...”; end if;

In the dollar-quoting approach, this becomes:

a_output := a_output || $$ if v_$$ || referrer_keys.kind || $$ like ’$$
|| referrer_keys.key_string || $$’
then return ’$$ || referrer_keys.referrer_type
|| $$’; end if;$$;
where we assume we only need to put single quote marks into a_output, because it will be
re-quoted before use.

39.12. Porting from Oracle PL/SQL

This section explains differences between PostgreSQL’s PL/pgSQL language and Oracle’s PL/SQL
language, to help developers who port applications from Oracle® to PostgreSQL.
PL/pgSQL is similar to PL/SQL in many aspects. It is a block-structured, imperative language, and
all variables have to be declared. Assignments, loops, conditionals are similar. The main differences
you should keep in mind when porting from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL are:

• If a name used in a SQL command could be either a column name of a table or a reference to
a variable of the function, PL/SQL treats it as a column name. This corresponds to PL/pgSQL’s

980
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

plpgsql.variable_conflict = use_column behavior, which is not the default, as explained

in Section 39.10.1. It’s often best to avoid such ambiguities in the first place, but if you have to port
a large amount of code that depends on this behavior, setting variable_conflict may be the
best solution.
• In PostgreSQL the function body must be written as a string literal. Therefore you need to use
dollar quoting or escape single quotes in the function body. (See Section 39.11.1.)
• Instead of packages, use schemas to organize your functions into groups.
• Since there are no packages, there are no package-level variables either. This is somewhat annoying.
You can keep per-session state in temporary tables instead.
• Integer FOR loops with REVERSE work differently: PL/SQL counts down from the second num-
ber to the first, while PL/pgSQL counts down from the first number to the second, requiring the
loop bounds to be swapped when porting. This incompatibility is unfortunate but is unlikely to be
changed. (See Section 39.6.3.5.)
• FOR loops over queries (other than cursors) also work differently: the target variable(s) must have
been declared, whereas PL/SQL always declares them implicitly. An advantage of this is that the
variable values are still accessible after the loop exits.
• There are various notational differences for the use of cursor variables.

39.12.1. Porting Examples

Example 39-7 shows how to port a simple function from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL.

Example 39-7. Porting a Simple Function from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL

Here is an Oracle PL/SQL function:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_fmt_browser_version(v_name varchar,
v_version varchar)
RETURN varchar IS
BEGIN
IF v_version IS NULL THEN
RETURN v_name;
END IF;
RETURN v_name || ’/’ || v_version;
END;
/
show errors;

Let’s go through this function and see the differences compared to PL/pgSQL:

• The RETURN key word in the function prototype (not the function body) becomes RETURNS in
PostgreSQL. Also, IS becomes AS, and you need to add a LANGUAGE clause because PL/pgSQL is
not the only possible function language.
• In PostgreSQL, the function body is considered to be a string literal, so you need to use quote marks
or dollar quotes around it. This substitutes for the terminating / in the Oracle approach.
• The show errors command does not exist in PostgreSQL, and is not needed since errors are
reported automatically.

981
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

This is how this function would look when ported to PostgreSQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_fmt_browser_version(v_name varchar,
v_version varchar)
RETURNS varchar AS $$
BEGIN
IF v_version IS NULL THEN
RETURN v_name;
END IF;
RETURN v_name || ’/’ || v_version;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Example 39-8 shows how to port a function that creates another function and how to handle the
ensuing quoting problems.

Example 39-8. Porting a Function that Creates Another Function from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL

The following procedure grabs rows from a SELECT statement and builds a large function with the
results in IF statements, for the sake of efficiency.
This is the Oracle version:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE cs_update_referrer_type_proc IS
CURSOR referrer_keys IS
SELECT * FROM cs_referrer_keys
ORDER BY try_order;
func_cmd VARCHAR(4000);
BEGIN
func_cmd := ’CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_find_referrer_type(v_host IN VARCHAR,
v_domain IN VARCHAR, v_url IN VARCHAR) RETURN VARCHAR IS BEGIN’;

FOR referrer_key IN referrer_keys LOOP

func_cmd := func_cmd ||
’ IF v_’ || referrer_key.kind
|| ’ LIKE ”’ || referrer_key.key_string
|| ”’ THEN RETURN ”’ || referrer_key.referrer_type
|| ”’; END IF;’;
END LOOP;

func_cmd := func_cmd || ’ RETURN NULL; END;’;

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE func_cmd;

END;
/
show errors;
Here is how this function would end up in PostgreSQL:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_update_referrer_type_proc() RETURNS void AS $func$
DECLARE
referrer_keys CURSOR IS
SELECT * FROM cs_referrer_keys
ORDER BY try_order;
func_body text;
func_cmd text;
BEGIN
func_body := ’BEGIN’;

982
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

FOR referrer_key IN referrer_keys LOOP

func_body := func_body ||
’ IF v_’ || referrer_key.kind
|| ’ LIKE ’ || quote_literal(referrer_key.key_string)
|| ’ THEN RETURN ’ || quote_literal(referrer_key.referrer_type)
|| ’; END IF;’ ;
END LOOP;

func_body := func_body || ’ RETURN NULL; END;’;

func_cmd :=
’CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_find_referrer_type(v_host varchar,
v_domain varchar,
v_url varchar)
RETURNS varchar AS ’
|| quote_literal(func_body)
|| ’ LANGUAGE plpgsql;’ ;

EXECUTE func_cmd;
END;
$func$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
Notice how the body of the function is built separately and passed through quote_literal to
double any quote marks in it. This technique is needed because we cannot safely use dollar quoting
for defining the new function: we do not know for sure what strings will be interpolated from the
referrer_key.key_string field. (We are assuming here that referrer_key.kind can be
trusted to always be host, domain, or url, but referrer_key.key_string might be anything,
in particular it might contain dollar signs.) This function is actually an improvement on the
Oracle original, because it will not generate broken code when referrer_key.key_string or
referrer_key.referrer_type contain quote marks.

Example 39-9 shows how to port a function with OUT parameters and string manipulation. PostgreSQL
does not have a built-in instr function, but you can create one using a combination of other functions.
In Section 39.12.3 there is a PL/pgSQL implementation of instr that you can use to make your
porting easier.

Example 39-9. Porting a Procedure With String Manipulation and OUT Parameters from
PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL

The following Oracle PL/SQL procedure is used to parse a URL and return several elements (host,
path, and query).
This is the Oracle version:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE cs_parse_url(
v_url IN VARCHAR,
v_host OUT VARCHAR, -- This will be passed back
v_path OUT VARCHAR, -- This one too
v_query OUT VARCHAR) -- And this one
IS
a_pos1 INTEGER;
a_pos2 INTEGER;
BEGIN
v_host := NULL;
v_path := NULL;

983
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

v_query := NULL;
a_pos1 := instr(v_url, ’//’);

IF a_pos1 = 0 THEN
RETURN;
END IF;
a_pos2 := instr(v_url, ’/’, a_pos1 + 2);
IF a_pos2 = 0 THEN
v_host := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 2);
v_path := ’/’;
RETURN;
END IF;

v_host := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 2, a_pos2 - a_pos1 - 2);

a_pos1 := instr(v_url, ’?’, a_pos2 + 1);

IF a_pos1 = 0 THEN
v_path := substr(v_url, a_pos2);
RETURN;
END IF;

v_path := substr(v_url, a_pos2, a_pos1 - a_pos2);

v_query := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 1);
END;
/
show errors;

Here is a possible translation into PL/pgSQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_parse_url(
v_url IN VARCHAR,
v_host OUT VARCHAR, -- This will be passed back
v_path OUT VARCHAR, -- This one too
v_query OUT VARCHAR) -- And this one
AS $$
DECLARE
a_pos1 INTEGER;
a_pos2 INTEGER;
BEGIN
v_host := NULL;
v_path := NULL;
v_query := NULL;
a_pos1 := instr(v_url, ’//’);

IF a_pos1 = 0 THEN
RETURN;
END IF;
a_pos2 := instr(v_url, ’/’, a_pos1 + 2);
IF a_pos2 = 0 THEN
v_host := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 2);
v_path := ’/’;
RETURN;
END IF;

v_host := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 2, a_pos2 - a_pos1 - 2);

a_pos1 := instr(v_url, ’?’, a_pos2 + 1);

IF a_pos1 = 0 THEN

984
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

v_path := substr(v_url, a_pos2);

RETURN;
END IF;

v_path := substr(v_url, a_pos2, a_pos1 - a_pos2);

v_query := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 1);
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
This function could be used like this:
SELECT * FROM cs_parse_url(’http://foobar.com/query.cgi?baz’);

Example 39-10 shows how to port a procedure that uses numerous features that are specific to Oracle.

Example 39-10. Porting a Procedure from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL

The Oracle version:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE cs_create_job(v_job_id IN INTEGER) IS
a_running_job_count INTEGER;
PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;�
BEGIN
LOCK TABLE cs_jobs IN EXCLUSIVE MODE;�

SELECT count(*) INTO a_running_job_count FROM cs_jobs WHERE end_stamp IS NULL;

IF a_running_job_count > 0 THEN

COMMIT; -- free lock�
raise_application_error(-20000,
’Unable to create a new job: a job is currently running.’);
END IF;

DELETE FROM cs_active_job;

INSERT INTO cs_active_job(job_id) VALUES (v_job_id);

BEGIN
INSERT INTO cs_jobs (job_id, start_stamp) VALUES (v_job_id, sysdate);
EXCEPTION
WHEN dup_val_on_index THEN NULL; -- don’t worry if it already exists
END;
COMMIT;
END;
/
show errors

Procedures like this can easily be converted into PostgreSQL functions returning void. This proce-
dure in particular is interesting because it can teach us some things:

� There is no PRAGMA statement in PostgreSQL.

� If you do a LOCK TABLE in PL/pgSQL, the lock will not be released until the calling transaction
is finished.
� You cannot issue COMMIT in a PL/pgSQL function. The function is running within some outer
transaction and so COMMIT would imply terminating the function’s execution. However, in this
particular case it is not necessary anyway, because the lock obtained by the LOCK TABLE will be
released when we raise an error.

985
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

This is how we could port this procedure to PL/pgSQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_create_job(v_job_id integer) RETURNS void AS $$
DECLARE
a_running_job_count integer;
BEGIN
LOCK TABLE cs_jobs IN EXCLUSIVE MODE;

SELECT count(*) INTO a_running_job_count FROM cs_jobs WHERE end_stamp IS NULL;

IF a_running_job_count > 0 THEN

RAISE EXCEPTION ’Unable to create a new job: a job is currently running’;�
END IF;

DELETE FROM cs_active_job;

INSERT INTO cs_active_job(job_id) VALUES (v_job_id);

BEGIN
INSERT INTO cs_jobs (job_id, start_stamp) VALUES (v_job_id, now());
EXCEPTION
WHEN unique_violation THEN �
-- don’t worry if it already exists
END;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

� The syntax of RAISE is considerably different from Oracle’s statement, although the basic case
RAISE exception_name works similarly.

� The exception names supported by PL/pgSQL are different from Oracle’s. The set of built-in
exception names is much larger (see Appendix A). There is not currently a way to declare user-
defined exception names, although you can throw user-chosen SQLSTATE values instead.
The main functional difference between this procedure and the Oracle equivalent is that the exclusive
lock on the cs_jobs table will be held until the calling transaction completes. Also, if the caller later
aborts (for example due to an error), the effects of this procedure will be rolled back.

39.12.2. Other Things to Watch For

This section explains a few other things to watch for when porting Oracle PL/SQL functions to Post-
greSQL.

39.12.2.1. Implicit Rollback after Exceptions

In PL/pgSQL, when an exception is caught by an EXCEPTION clause, all database changes since the
block’s BEGIN are automatically rolled back. That is, the behavior is equivalent to what you’d get in
Oracle with:

BEGIN
SAVEPOINT s1;
... code here ...
EXCEPTION
WHEN ... THEN

986
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

ROLLBACK TO s1;
... code here ...
WHEN ... THEN
ROLLBACK TO s1;
... code here ...
END;

If you are translating an Oracle procedure that uses SAVEPOINT and ROLLBACK TO in this style,
your task is easy: just omit the SAVEPOINT and ROLLBACK TO. If you have a procedure that uses
SAVEPOINT and ROLLBACK TO in a different way then some actual thought will be required.

39.12.2.2. EXECUTE
The PL/pgSQL version of EXECUTE works similarly to the PL/SQL version, but you have to remember
to use quote_literal and quote_ident as described in Section 39.5.4. Constructs of the type
EXECUTE ’SELECT * FROM $1’; will not work reliably unless you use these functions.

39.12.2.3. Optimizing PL/pgSQL Functions

PostgreSQL gives you two function creation modifiers to optimize execution: “volatility” (whether the
function always returns the same result when given the same arguments) and “strictness” (whether the
function returns null if any argument is null). Consult the CREATE FUNCTION reference page for
details.
When making use of these optimization attributes, your CREATE FUNCTION statement might look
something like this:

CREATE FUNCTION foo(...) RETURNS integer AS $$

...
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT IMMUTABLE;

39.12.3. Appendix
This section contains the code for a set of Oracle-compatible instr functions that you can use to
simplify your porting efforts.

--
-- instr functions that mimic Oracle’s counterpart
-- Syntax: instr(string1, string2, [n], [m]) where [] denotes optional parameters.
--
-- Searches string1 beginning at the nth character for the mth occurrence
-- of string2. If n is negative, search backwards. If m is not passed,
-- assume 1 (search starts at first character).
--

CREATE FUNCTION instr(varchar, varchar) RETURNS integer AS $$

DECLARE
pos integer;
BEGIN
pos:= instr($1, $2, 1);

987
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

RETURN pos;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT IMMUTABLE;

CREATE FUNCTION instr(string varchar, string_to_search varchar, beg_index integer)

RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
pos integer NOT NULL DEFAULT 0;
temp_str varchar;
beg integer;
length integer;
ss_length integer;
BEGIN
IF beg_index > 0 THEN
temp_str := substring(string FROM beg_index);
pos := position(string_to_search IN temp_str);

IF pos = 0 THEN
RETURN 0;
ELSE
RETURN pos + beg_index - 1;
END IF;
ELSE
ss_length := char_length(string_to_search);
length := char_length(string);
beg := length + beg_index - ss_length + 2;

WHILE beg > 0 LOOP

temp_str := substring(string FROM beg FOR ss_length);
pos := position(string_to_search IN temp_str);

IF pos > 0 THEN

RETURN beg;
END IF;

beg := beg - 1;
END LOOP;

RETURN 0;
END IF;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT IMMUTABLE;

CREATE FUNCTION instr(string varchar, string_to_search varchar,

beg_index integer, occur_index integer)
RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
pos integer NOT NULL DEFAULT 0;
occur_number integer NOT NULL DEFAULT 0;
temp_str varchar;
beg integer;
i integer;
length integer;
ss_length integer;
BEGIN

988
 Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

IF beg_index > 0 THEN

beg := beg_index;
temp_str := substring(string FROM beg_index);

FOR i IN 1..occur_index LOOP

pos := position(string_to_search IN temp_str);

IF i = 1 THEN
beg := beg + pos - 1;
ELSE
beg := beg + pos;
END IF;

temp_str := substring(string FROM beg + 1);

END LOOP;

IF pos = 0 THEN
RETURN 0;
ELSE
RETURN beg;
END IF;
ELSE
ss_length := char_length(string_to_search);
length := char_length(string);
beg := length + beg_index - ss_length + 2;

WHILE beg > 0 LOOP

temp_str := substring(string FROM beg FOR ss_length);
pos := position(string_to_search IN temp_str);

IF pos > 0 THEN

occur_number := occur_number + 1;

IF occur_number = occur_index THEN

RETURN beg;
END IF;
END IF;

beg := beg - 1;
END LOOP;

RETURN 0;
END IF;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT IMMUTABLE;

989