Re: Table Valued Parameters

Andrew Hall wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was wondering whether anybody would be able to advise me on how (if it is possible) to port some functionality from
Oracle?
> 
> This is just an example - in Oracle, I am able to do the following 
> 
> --
> -- Create a data type which replicates the data structure of a single user in my application.
> -- I know that this can be done using PostgreSQL.

> -- Create a data type which can store many instances of a single 'TY_APP_USER' 
> -- [essentially this is a table valued data type]. An instance of this data type can be
> -- created and populated by the client application [a java based one in my case].
> --
> -- I can't find any reference to something 
> -- similar to this using postgreSQL.

The following may not do anything interesting, but it does show arrays
of composite types, which is what you are after.

To prevent quoting insanity, I recommend the ARRAY[] constructor rather
than array literals. You do need the explicit typecasts.

Oh - and version 8.3 or higher for arrays of compound types.


BEGIN;

CREATE TYPE typ1 AS (i integer, t text);

CREATE FUNCTION print_array(a typ1[]) RETURNS void AS $$
DECLARE   m int;   n int;   i int;   e typ1;
BEGIN   m := array_lower(a, 1);   n := array_upper(a, 1);   FOR i IN m .. n LOOP       e := a[i];       RAISE NOTICE '%
-%', e.i, e.t;   END LOOP;   RETURN;
 
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT print_array(ARRAY[ '(1,"abc")'::typ1, '(2,"def")'::typ1 ]);
SELECT print_array(ARRAY[ '(1,"abc")', '(2,"def")' ]::typ1[]);

ROLLBACK;

--  Richard Huxton Archonet Ltd