Re: Changing from NOT NULL to NULL

> Is there anyway I can change a field to allowing nulls without dumping the table, dropping it,
> recreating it as desired, and filling all the data back in?

I hope this gets indexed correctly as I hosed the original and tried a cut-n-paste of the subject line,

For that, I have this which I didn't write myself but snagged from somewhere.  Maybe pgsql-general???


-- This function takes a table and column and will set the column
-- to allow NULLs.
--
-- $Id$
--
DROP FUNCTION kl_setnull(name, name);
CREATE FUNCTION kl_setnull(name, name) RETURNS boolean AS '
DECLARE
    tablename ALIAS FOR $1;
    colname ALIAS FOR $2;
    rec_affected int;
BEGIN
    -- If any params are NULL, return NULL - this means function
    -- can be defined isstrict.
    IF tablename IS NULL OR colname IS NULL THEN
        RETURN NULL;
    END IF;

    -- Lock table with standard ALTER TABLE locks
    EXECUTE ''LOCK TABLE '' || quote_ident(tablename) || '' IN ACCESS EXCLUSIVE MODE'';

    -- Update the system catalogs
    EXECUTE ''UPDATE pg_attribute SET attnotnull = false WHERE attrelid = (SELECT oid FROM pg_class WHERE relname = ''
||quote_literal(tablename) || '') AND attname = '' || quote_literal(colname); 

    -- Get number of rows modified
    GET DIAGNOSTICS rec_affected = ROW_COUNT;

    -- Return number of rows modified
    RETURN (rec_affected = 1);

END;
' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql'
WITH (isstrict);
--
joe speigle
www.sirfsup.com