Custom SERIAL / autoincrement per group of values - sql

Question

I'm trying to make a blog system of sort and I ran into a slight problem.
Simply put, there's 3 columns in my article table:
id SERIAL,
category VARCHAR FK,
category_id INT
id column is obviously the PK and it is used as a global identifier for all articles.
category column is well .. category.
category_id is used as a UNIQUE ID within a category so currently there is a UNIQUE(category, category_id) constraint in place.
However, I also want for category_id to auto-increment.
I want it so that every time I execute a query like
INSERT INTO article(category) VALUES ('stackoverflow');
I want the category_id column to be automatically be filled according to the latest category_id of the 'stackoverflow' category.
Achieving this in my logic code is quite easy. I just select latest num and insert +1 of that but that involves two separate queries.
I am looking for a SQL solution that can do all this in one query.

Answer 1

This has been asked many times and the general idea is bound to fail in a multi-user environment - and a blog system sounds like exactly such a case.
So the best answer is: Don't. Consider a different approach.
Drop the column category_id completely from your table - it does not store any information the other two columns (id, category) wouldn't store already.
Your id is a serial column and already auto-increments in a reliable fashion.
Auto increment SQL function
If you need some kind of category_id without gaps per category, generate it on the fly with row_number():
Serial numbers per group of rows for compound key

Answer 2

Concept
There are at least several ways to approach this. First one that comes to my mind:
Assign a value for category_id column inside a trigger executed for each row, by overwriting the input value from INSERT statement.
Action
Here's the SQL Fiddle to see the code in action
For a simple test, I'm creating article table holding categories and their id's that should be unique for each category. I have omitted constraint creation - that's not relevant to present the point.
create table article ( id serial, category varchar, category_id int )
Inserting some values for two distinct categories using generate_series() function to have an auto-increment already in place.
insert into article(category, category_id)
select 'stackoverflow', i from generate_series(1,1) i
union all
select 'stackexchange', i from generate_series(1,3) i
Creating a trigger function, that would select MAX(category_id) and increment its value by 1 for a category we're inserting a row with and then overwrite the value right before moving on with the actual INSERT to table (BEFORE INSERT trigger takes care of that).
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION category_increment()
RETURNS trigger
LANGUAGE plpgsql
AS
$$
DECLARE
v_category_inc int := 0;
BEGIN
SELECT MAX(category_id) + 1 INTO v_category_inc FROM article WHERE category = NEW.category;
IF v_category_inc is null THEN
NEW.category_id := 1;
ELSE
NEW.category_id := v_category_inc;
END IF;
RETURN NEW;
END;
$$
Using the function as a trigger.
CREATE TRIGGER trg_category_increment
BEFORE INSERT ON article
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE category_increment()
Inserting some more values (post trigger appliance) for already existing categories and non-existing ones.
INSERT INTO article(category) VALUES
('stackoverflow'),
('stackexchange'),
('nonexisting');
Query used to select data:
select category, category_id From article order by 1,2
Result for initial inserts:
category category_id
stackexchange 1
stackexchange 2
stackexchange 3
stackoverflow 1
Result after final inserts:
category category_id
nonexisting 1
stackexchange 1
stackexchange 2
stackexchange 3
stackexchange 4
stackoverflow 1
stackoverflow 2

Answer 3

Postgresql uses sequences to achieve this; it's a different approach from what you are used to in MySQL. Take a look at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/sql-createsequence.html for complete reference.
Basically you create a sequence (a database object) by:
CREATE SEQUENCE serials;
And then when you want to add to your table you will have:
INSERT INTO mytable (name, id) VALUES ('The Name', NEXTVAL('serials')