I am attempting to insert a new row into a table with a column defined as an array or UUIDs:
alter table medias add column "order" uuid[];
I am using Objection.js ORM and attempting to execute the following query:
const order = [
'BFAD6B0D-D3E6-4EB3-B3AB-108244A5DD7F'
]
Medias
.query()
.insert({
order: lit(order.map(id => lit(id).castType('uuid'))).castArray()
})
But the query is malformed and therefore does not execute:
INSERT INTO xxx ("order")
VALUES (ARRAY [
{"_value":"BFAD6B0D-D3E6-4EB3-B3AB-108244A5DD7F","_cast":"uuid","_toJson":false,"_toArray":false}
])
As can be seen, the query contains the JSON-stringified representation of the LiteralBuilder object and not something that the SQL syntax understands as a typecast.
If I skip casting the individual UUID strings and just cast the whole column into an array, then Postgres rejects the query because the column is of type uuid[] but I am attempting to insert the column as text[].
How can I format this query using Objection.js ORM?
My goal is to keep the column definition untouched and be able to insert a Postgres' array of UUIDs using Objection.js, either through its API or via raw query. If this is not currently possible with Objection, I am willing, as a last resort, to re-define the column as text[], but I would like to make sure I really have no other option.
I have a jsonb field in a PostgreSQL table which was supposed to contain a dictionary like data aka {} but few of its entries got an array due to source data issues.
I want to weed out those entries. One of the ways is to perform following query -
select json_field from data_table where cast(json_field as text) like '[%]'
But this requires converting each jsonb field into text. With data_table having order of 200 million entries, this looks like bit of an overkill.
I investigated pg_typeof but it returns jsonb which doesn't help differentiate between a dictionary and an array.
Is there a more efficient way to achieve the above?
How about using the json_typeof function?
select json_field from data_table where json_typeof(json_field) = 'array'
In my table mytable I have a json field called data and I inserted json with a lot of keys & values.
I know that it's possible to select individual fields like so:
SELECT data->'mykey' as mykey from mytable
But how can I get an overview of all of the json keys on a certain depth? I would have expected something like
SELECT data->* from mytable
but that doesn't work. Is there something similar?
You can use the json_object_keys() function to get all the top-level keys of a json value:
SELECT keys.*
FROM mytable, json_object_keys(mytable.data) AS keys (mykey);
If you want to search at a deeper level, then first extract that deeper level from the json value using the #> operator:
SELECT keys.*
FROM mytable, json_object_keys(mytable.data #> '{level1, level2}') AS keys (mykey);
Note that the function returns a set of text, so you should invoke the function as a row source.
If you are using the jsonb data type, then use the jsonb_object_keys() function.
One of the great things about postgres is that it allows indexing into a json object.
I have a column of data formatted a little bit like this:
{"Items":
[
{"RetailPrice":6.1,"EffectivePrice":0,"Multiplier":1,"ItemId":"53636"},
{"RetailPrice":0.47,"EffectivePrice":0,"Multiplier":1,"ItemId":"53404"}
]
}
What I'd like to do is find the average RetailPrice of each row with these data.
Something like
select avg(json_extract_path_text(item_json, 'RetailPrice'))
but really I need to do this for each item in the items json object. So for this example, the value in the queried cell would be 3.285
How can I do this?
Could work like this:
WITH cte(tbl_id, json_items) AS (
SELECT 1
, '{"Items": [
{"RetailPrice":6.1,"EffectivePrice":0,"Multiplier":1,"ItemId":"53636"}
,{"RetailPrice":0.47,"EffectivePrice":0,"Multiplier":1,"ItemId":"53404"}]}'::json
)
SELECT tbl_id, round(avg((elem->>'RetailPrice')::numeric), 3) AS avg_retail_price
FROM cte c
, json_array_elements(c.json_items->'Items') elem
GROUP BY 1;
The CTE just substitutes for a table like:
CREATE TABLE tbl (
tbl_id serial PRIMARY KEY
, json_items json
);
json_array_elements() (Postgres 9.3+) to unnest the json array is instrumental.
I am using an implicit JOIN LATERAL here. Much like in this related example:
Query for element of array in JSON column
For an index to support this kind of query consider this related answer:
Index for finding an element in a JSON array
For details on how to best store EAV data:
Is there a name for this database structure?
I'm trying to select a number of fields, one of which needs to be an array with each element of the array containing two values. Each array item needs to contain a name (character varying) and an ID (numeric). I know how to return an array of single values (using the ARRAY keyword) but I'm unsure of how to return an array of an object which in itself contains two values.
The query is something like
SELECT
t.field1,
t.field2,
ARRAY(--with each element containing two values i.e. {'TheName', 1 })
FROM MyTable t
I read that one way to do this is by selecting the values into a type and then creating an array of that type. Problem is, the rest of the function is already returning a type (which means I would then have nested types - is that OK? If so, how would you read this data back in application code - i.e. with a .Net data provider like NPGSQL?)
Any help is much appreciated.
ARRAYs can only hold elements of the same type
Your example displays a text and an integer value (no single quotes around 1). It is generally impossible to mix types in an array. To get those values into an array you have to create a composite type and then form an ARRAY of that composite type like you already mentioned yourself.
Alternatively you can use the data types json in Postgres 9.2+, jsonb in Postgres 9.4+ or hstore for key-value pairs.
Of course, you can cast the integer to text, and work with a two-dimensional text array. Consider the two syntax variants for a array input in the demo below and consult the manual on array input.
There is a limitation to overcome. If you try to aggregate an ARRAY (build from key and value) into a two-dimensional array, the aggregate function array_agg() or the ARRAY constructor error out:
ERROR: could not find array type for data type text[]
There are ways around it, though.
Aggregate key-value pairs into a 2-dimensional array
PostgreSQL 9.1 with standard_conforming_strings= on:
CREATE TEMP TABLE tbl(
id int
,txt text
,txtarr text[]
);
The column txtarr is just there to demonstrate syntax variants in the INSERT command. The third row is spiked with meta-characters:
INSERT INTO tbl VALUES
(1, 'foo', '{{1,foo1},{2,bar1},{3,baz1}}')
,(2, 'bar', ARRAY[['1','foo2'],['2','bar2'],['3','baz2']])
,(3, '}b",a{r''', '{{1,foo3},{2,bar3},{3,baz3}}'); -- txt has meta-characters
SELECT * FROM tbl;
Simple case: aggregate two integer (I use the same twice) into a two-dimensional int array:
Update: Better with custom aggregate function
With the polymorphic type anyarray it works for all base types:
CREATE AGGREGATE array_agg_mult (anyarray) (
SFUNC = array_cat
,STYPE = anyarray
,INITCOND = '{}'
);
Call:
SELECT array_agg_mult(ARRAY[ARRAY[id,id]]) AS x -- for int
,array_agg_mult(ARRAY[ARRAY[id::text,txt]]) AS y -- or text
FROM tbl;
Note the additional ARRAY[] layer to make it a multidimensional array.
Update for Postgres 9.5+
Postgres now ships a variant of array_agg() accepting array input and you can replace my custom function from above with this:
The manual:
array_agg(expression)
...
input arrays concatenated into array of one
higher dimension (inputs must all have same dimensionality, and cannot
be empty or NULL)
I suspect that without having more knowledge of your application I'm not going to be able to get you all the way to the result you need. But we can get pretty far. For starters, there is the ROW function:
# SELECT 'foo', ROW(3, 'Bob');
?column? | row
----------+---------
foo | (3,Bob)
(1 row)
So that right there lets you bundle a whole row into a cell. You could also make things more explicit by making a type for it:
# CREATE TYPE person(id INTEGER, name VARCHAR);
CREATE TYPE
# SELECT now(), row(3, 'Bob')::person;
now | row
-------------------------------+---------
2012-02-03 10:46:13.279512-07 | (3,Bob)
(1 row)
Incidentally, whenever you make a table, PostgreSQL makes a type of the same name, so if you already have a table like this you also have a type. For example:
# DROP TYPE person;
DROP TYPE
# CREATE TABLE people (id SERIAL, name VARCHAR);
NOTICE: CREATE TABLE will create implicit sequence "people_id_seq" for serial column "people.id"
CREATE TABLE
# SELECT 'foo', row(3, 'Bob')::people;
?column? | row
----------+---------
foo | (3,Bob)
(1 row)
See in the third query there I used people just like a type.
Now this is not likely to be as much help as you'd think for two reasons:
I can't find any convenient syntax for pulling data out of the nested row.
I may be missing something, but I just don't see many people using this syntax. The only example I see in the documentation is a function taking a row value as an argument and doing something with it. I don't see an example of pulling the row out of the cell and querying against parts of it. It seems like you can package the data up this way, but it's hard to deconstruct after that. You'll wind up having to make a lot of stored procedures.
Your language's PostgreSQL driver may not be able to handle row-valued data nested in a row.
I can't speak for NPGSQL, but since this is a very PostgreSQL-specific feature you're not going to find support for it in libraries that support other databases. For example, Hibernate isn't going to be able to handle fetching an object stored as a cell value in a row. I'm not even sure the JDBC would be able to give Hibernate the information usefully, so the problem could go quite deep.
So, what you're doing here is feasible provided you can live without a lot of the niceties. I would recommend against pursuing it though, because it's going to be an uphill battle the whole way, unless I'm really misinformed.
A simple way without hstore
SELECT
jsonb_agg(to_jsonb (t))
FROM (
SELECT
unnest(ARRAY ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']) AS table_name
) t
>>> [{"table_name": "foo"}, {"table_name": "bar"}, {"table_name": "baz"}]