Using Custom Types in Postgres
I'm building out a pretty detailed application using Postgres and Node - mostly Postgres - trying to flex as much of its power as I can. For me, this means kicking ORMs to the curb and relying on Postgres' amazing function features
Using Types For Fun and Profit
In my last post about pulling documents from queries I showed an interesting way to return a result set using row_to_json to crunch down 1-many records into a JSON array. This works pretty well and is really fast - but it's not exactly pretty:
create or replace function get_member(member_id bigint)
returns table (
id bigint,
email varchar(255),
first varchar(25),
last varchar(25),
last_signin_at timestamptz,
notes json,
logs json,
roles json
)
as $$
DECLARE
found_user members;
parsed_logs json;
parsed_roles json;
parsed_notes json;
BEGIN
select * from members where members.id = member_id into found_user;
select json_agg(x) into parsed_logs from
(select * from logs where logs.member_id=found_user.id) x;
select json_agg(y) into parsed_notes from
(select * from notes where notes.member_id=found_user.id) y;
select json_agg(z) into parsed_roles from
(select * from roles
inner join members_roles on roles.id = members_roles.role_id
where members_roles.member_id=found_user.id) z;
return query
select found_user.id, found_user.email, found_user.first, found_user.last, found_user.last_signin_at,
parsed_notes, parsed_logs, parsed_roles
END;
$$ LANGUAGE PLPGSQL;
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I suppose - this looks nice to me, but one thing stands out: I don't like the anonymous table return style. I think I'll probably want to use that again somewhere so let's set that up.
The first thing to do is resolve it to a type:
create type member_summary as (
id bigint,
email varchar(255),
first varchar(25),
last varchar(25),
last_signin_at timestamptz,
notes json,
logs json,
roles json
);
Lovely. This is a composite type in Postgres - you can define your own base types if you want - but that's a whole other story. This composite type will do nicely.
Now we can rewrite the function to be a bit more concise:
create or replace function get_member(member_id bigint)
returns setof member_type
as $$
DECLARE
found_user members;
parsed_logs json;
parsed_roles json;
parsed_notes json;
BEGIN
select * from members where members.id = member_id into found_user;
select json_agg(x) into parsed_logs from
(select * from logs where logs.member_id=found_user.id) x;
select json_agg(y) into parsed_notes from
(select * from notes where notes.member_id=found_user.id) y;
select json_agg(z) into parsed_roles from
(select * from roles
inner join members_roles on roles.id = members_roles.role_id
where members_roles.member_id=found_user.id) z;
return query
select found_user.id, found_user.email, found_user.first, found_user.last, found_user.last_signin_at,
parsed_notes, parsed_logs, parsed_roles
END;
$$ LANGUAGE PLPGSQL;
Much better. You'll notice that instead of saying returns TABLE I now need to say it's a setof a type. A "type" in Postgres can be a base type (like int, varchar, etc) or a table - which is a composite type by itself. members is a type. If you want to create your own for reusability - you sure can!
Now we can reuse this type if we like - say by finding a member by email:
create or replace function get_member_by_email(member_email varchar(255))
returns setof member_type
as $$
DECLARE
found_id bigint;
BEGIN
select id from members into found_id where members.email = member_email;
return query
select * from get_member(found_id);
END;
$$ LANGUAGE PLPGSQL;
Enums
I also have a logging table that keeps track of things in the system. For that, I like to know what type of log is being stored. If I was being strict, I'd have two tables, like this:
create table log_types(
id serial primary key not null,
description varchar(25)
);
create table logs(
id serial primary key not null,
subject_id int not null references log_types(id),
member_id bigint not null references members(id) on delete cascade,
entry text not null,
data json,
created_at timestamptz default current_timestamp
);
This works fine and there's a nice Foreign Key constraint in there to be sure I have some type of description. However there's a simpler way that, to me, is a bit more descriptive:
create type log_type as ENUM(
'registration', 'authentication', 'activity', 'system'
);
create table logs(
id serial primary key not null,
subject_id log_type not null,
member_id bigint not null references members(id) on delete cascade,
entry text not null,
data json,
created_at timestamptz default current_timestamp
);
insert into logs (subject, member_id, entry)
values ('registration',11111,'Member registered');
This works basically the same way, but instead of having a simple integer in my logs table, I have the description itself with a constraint on it that it must contain one of the specified values.
Lovely. There's a lot more we can do here on the write-side of working with data. I'll cover that in the next post.
There's More...
Embracing SQL In Postgres
It's Time To Get Over That Stored Procedure Aversion You Have
