Re: [GENERAL] Updating column on row update

On 23/11/2009 4:15 AM, Scott Marlowe wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Thom Brown <thombrown@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> This should be simple, but for some reason I'm not quite sure what the
>> solution is.  I want to be able to update the value of a column for rows
>> that have been updated.  More specifically, if a row is updated, I want it's
>> modified_date column to be populated with the current time stamp.  I've
>> looked at triggers and rules, and it looks like I'd need to create a
>> function just to achieve this which seems incredibly clumsy and unnecessary.
>>  Could someone enlighten me?
>
> Well, you DO have to create a function, but it's not all that clumsy
> really.   Also it's quite flexible so you can do lots of complex stuff
> and hide it away in a trigger function.

I do think this comes up often enough that a built-in trigger "update
named column with result of expression on insert" trigger might be
desirable. Especially if implemented in C to avoid the need for PL/PgSQL
and to reduce the CPU cost a smidge.

Hmm. CC'iing -hackers; there was a discussion earlier on it being
desirable to have more "[EASY]" TODO items, and this might be a good one
for the job.

So might "CREATE LANGUAGE ... IF NOT EXISTS". Maybe even "CREATE ROLE
... IF NOT EXISTS" and "CREATE USER ... IF NOT EXISTS" - I know I'd find
them really handy.

--
Craig Ringer