Re: Strategy for Primary Key Generation When Populating Table

On 2/9/2012 10:49 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:
> I have a lot of data currently in .pdf files. I can extract the relevant
> data to plain text and format it to create a large text file of "INSERT
> INTO
> ..." rows. I need a unique ID for each row and there are no columns that
> would make a natural key so the serial data type would be appropriate.
>
> When I prepare the text file I can start each row with the delimiter (',')
> to indicate there's a table column preceding. If I define the primary key
> as serial type on that first position in the file, will postgres
> automagically fill it in as each row is read into the table?
>
> If not, or if there's a better way of approaching this task, please clue
> me in to that.
>
> TIA,
>
> Rich
>
>
>

If you create a serial column, dont put the column name or a value into
your insert statement.

create table junk (id serial, stuff text);
insert into junk(stuff) values ('my stuff');

or, and I've never done this, I think you can use the default keyword:

insert into junk(id, stuff) values (default, 'my stuff');

-Andy