Re: feature request: expose sql formatter

On 2/6/07, Dave Page <dpage@postgresql.org> wrote:
> Merlin Moncure wrote:
> > hello all, I have a pie in the sky feature request here.  I've been
> > looking around for a sql 'beautifier' so that all our ddl which is
> > stored in .sql files can be cleaned up.  pgadmin has a much better
> > formatter than the gook emitted by pg_dump...
> The architecture of pgAdmin is such that your first suggestion would be
> nigh-on impossible. Each object type has a class which is able to read
> one or more objects of it's own type from the catalog, and provide a set
> of members to access it's properties. There are additional member
> functions to return the SQL, but this is reconstructed from the
> properties of the object, not by re-formatting the output of
> pg_get_viewdef or it's relatives.
>
> The second suggestion is doable, but fairly invasive as you'd need to
> get a range of conditional statements to format different parts of the
> DDL created in each GetSQL() member. I'd be wary of accepting a patch to
> do this due to the mess it would likely make of much of the code.

I had a feeling you would say that :)  Thanks for the listen though.

merlin