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Thread: assign null value to a field in plpgsql

assign null value to a field in plpgsql

From
"David Monarchi"
Date:
Hello -

I'm using PG 8.2.

I have some code of the form

   domain2Row domain2_dom%ROWTYPE;
   adServerLoadRow domain2_dom%ROWTYPE;
...
   SELECT * INTO domain2Row FROM domain2_dom WHERE domain_name_dom = quote_literal(domainName);
   adServerLoadRow = domain2Row;

I want to go through a series of checks to see if I should set a field to null in the adServerLoadRow.  I will not know in advance which fields I will need to check nor their data types.

Assuming I have identified field X as one which I want to set to null, I want to be able to perform the following assignment;

  adServerLoadRow.X = NULL;

However, I can't seem to do this.  I thought about just declaring a variable and not assigning anything to it, so it would be null.  Then I could do the following
 
  adServerLoadRow.X = aNullVariable;

The problem is that I won't know in advance whether the field is numeric or text, so I won't know which null variable to use.

I'm constrained to use plpgsql, so alternate language solutions won't help me.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

david

Re: assign null value to a field in plpgsql

From
Tom Lane
Date:
"David Monarchi" <david.e.monarchi@gmail.com> writes:
> I want to go through a series of checks to see if I should set a field to
> null in the adServerLoadRow.  I will not know in advance which fields I will
> need to check nor their data types.
> ...
> I'm constrained to use plpgsql,

You've been given an impossible set of constraints, because plpgsql is a
statically-typed language.  Use another PL.

            regards, tom lane