Re: IF...THEN...ELSE on INSERT

Andrew McMillan(andrew@catalyst.net.nz)@Sat, Dec 08, 2001 at 12:56:29AM +1300:
> On Sat, 2001-12-08 at 00:34, Vincent AE Scott wrote:
> > What's the fastest / most effecient way todo a test on an insert
> > operation and then change the SQL that gets exeuted?
> >
> > Specifically, i want to check if a row already exists, and then instead
> > of inserting the row, just increment a counter for that row.
>
> I usually find this best implemented in a PL/PGSQL function:
>
> CREATE FUNCTION myfunc( TEXT, NUMBER ) RETURNS INT4 AS '
>    DECLARE
>       p_1 ALIAS FOR $1;
>       p_2 ALIAS FOR $2;
>       curr_val TEXT;
>    BEGIN
>       SELECT <something> INTO curr_val FROM mytable
>                                         WHERE table_id = p_1;
>       IF FOUND THEN
>         UPDATE mytable SET upfield = p_2
>                                         WHERE table_id = p_1;
>       ELSE
>         INSERT INTO mytable (table_id, upfield)
>                                         VALUES( p_1, p_2 );
>       END IF;
>       RETURN <whatever>;
>    END;
> ' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
>
> Hope that helps,

Thanks for that, and yes it does help somewhat, but it appears somewhat
cumbersome to me.  It appears to me ( but i could be well out of whack )
that the function is losely linked to the table.  If i change the table
definition ( like adding an extra column ) do i have to modify the
function aswell?

Is there anyway i can just modify the behaviour of an insert statement
to transparently do this for me.  That way at least the database clients
dont have to implicitly know about this function/feature.  Does that
make sense?

TIA,
-vince

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