Thread: Tantalizing reference to passing data from NEW variable in a trigger function...
Tantalizing reference to passing data from NEW variable in a trigger function...
From
Rich Cullingford
Date:
All, This question seems to have been asked a number of times on this list, recently (including by me) without being answered: how to pass the row data stored in the NEW variable from a trigger function into a sub-function. None of the obvious syntaxes work, including one by a respondent in this list that suggested assigning NEW to a record variable, and then passing *that*. After searching up and down the archives, I see the following tantalizing snippet (from 6/2003) in the context of a rule: Gunter Diehl <gdid ( at ) gmx ( dot ) de> writes:> create funtion f1(v, v) returns void as '...'> create rule vupt as onupdate to v do instead select f1(new, old)> While accepting this definitions, pg says it can not handle "whole-tuple> references"at runtime. FWIW, the "old" case works fine. "new" doesn't work so well because the new row hasn't been formed into a tuple at the point where the rule runs; it only exists as a list of variables. (This is a rather handwavy explanation, but I think it captures the key point.) While this could probably be fixed with some effort, I doubt it's going to happen soon. Is there any chance of doing what you want with a trigger instead of a rule? ^^^^^ If there's a page somewhere that says how to do this, I'd be extremely grateful for a pointer. The obvious maneuver of copying NEW's data field-by-field into a composite variable is rather unappetizing when the row is wide... Rich Cullingford rculling@sysd.com
Rich Cullingford wrote: > This question seems to have been asked a number of times on this list, > recently (including by me) without being answered: how to pass the row > data stored in the NEW variable from a trigger function into a > sub-function. None of the obvious syntaxes work, including one by a > respondent in this list that suggested assigning NEW to a record > variable, and then passing *that*. After searching up and down the > archives, I see the following tantalizing snippet (from 6/2003) in the > context of a rule: The standard answer to this has been to use PL/Tcl for your trigger function instead of PL/pgSQL. I imagine PL/Python would work also, but I'm not sure. (FWIW, PL/R would work too, but I doubt you would want to install R just to have this capability.) I looked a bit at making this work in PL/pgSQL at some point -- IIRC the issues to be solved were non-trivial. Joe
Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com> writes: > Rich Cullingford wrote: >> This question seems to have been asked a number of times on this list, >> recently (including by me) without being answered: how to pass the row >> data stored in the NEW variable from a trigger function into a >> sub-function. > I looked a bit at making this work in PL/pgSQL at some point -- IIRC the > issues to be solved were non-trivial. I think that this might be less non-trivial given the recent changes in the composite-type-datum support. I haven't got round to looking at plpgsql in particular, though. regards, tom lane