Question

I have a table and a procedure like this:

CREATE TABLE test_table (
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
info TEXT);

create or replace function test() returns void as
$$
declare
  v_row test_table%ROWTYPE;
begin
  v_row.info := 'test';
  insert into test_table values (v_row.*);
end;
$$ language plpgsql;

select test();

ERROR:  null value in column "id" violates not-null constraint

How to use default value for the v_row.id field? I know I could write

insert into test_table (info) values (v_row.info);

But in my real case I have a lot of such tables with many columns and I really want to avoid enumerating all the columns in the insert statement.

Answer 1

By writing insert into test_table values (v_row.*); you actually force postgres to insert NULL value into the id column.

You will need to run such code – either in application

v_row.id := nextval( 'mysequence' );

.. or in trigger

IF NEW.id IS NULL THEN
    NEW.id := nextval( 'mysequence' );
END IF;