Re: passing column name to a PL/pgsql function for ALTER TABLE ADD

On Thu, Aug 11, 2005 at 02:50:11PM +0400, Alexander Kotelnikov wrote:
>
> Is it possible? I would like to do something like
> CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION add_column(name, anyelement) RETURNS integer AS '
> DECLARE
> col_name ALIAS FOR $1;
> def_val ALIAS FOR $2;
> BEGIN
> ALTER TABLE my_table ADD col_name def_val%TYPE;
> RETURN 0;
> END;
> ' LANGUAGE plpgsql;
> SELECT add_column('a', 1);

Do you really need this function to be polymorphic, or can you pass
the new column's type as a text argument? In any case, you'll
probably want to read "Executing Dynamic Commands" in the PL/pgSQL
documentation:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/static/plpgsql-statements.html#PLPGSQL-STATEMENTS-EXECUTING-DYN

--
Michael Fuhr