Re: "OLD." || myColumnNameVar (How to generically access columns in a trigger's OLD or NEW records)

On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 12:46:50PM -0700, Basil Bourque wrote:
> In PL/pgSQL, how does one generically access the fields of the OLD or NEW record?
>
> I've tried code such as this:
>   'NEW.' || quote_ident( myColumnNameVar ) || '::varchar'
>
> But when run by an "EXECUTE" command, I get errors such as:
>   ERROR:  missing FROM-clause entry for table "old"
>   SQL state: 42P01
>
> It seems that I cannot get PL/pgSQL to interpret the text of "NEW." + column name as text.
>
> My goal is to loop each field in a trigger, comparing the "OLD." & "NEW." values of each field. If different I want
tolog both values in a history/audit-trail table. 
>
> Is there some way to loop the fields of a trigger's Record? I've read other people's frustration at not being able to
getan array of fields from the Record. 
>
> My approach is to fake it: Get the table's columns and data types by querying the meta-data tables (pg_attribute,
pg_class,pg_type). But I cannot get "NEW." || colNameVar to be interpreted. Perhaps there is a better approach. 

long story short - it's not possible.

a bit longer story:
there are couple of workarounds.

1. you can use hstore datatype and it's casts from record to hstore
2. you can use another pl/* language - like pl/perl - which doesn't have
this problem
3. you can use ready made tool for auditing that does what you want, so
you don't have to worry ( http://pgfoundry.org/projects/tablelog/ )
4. http://www.depesz.com/index.php/2010/03/10/dynamic-updates-of-fields-in-new-in-plpgsql/
but really, read, and understand the warnings.

depesz

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