Question

I need a simple function to return dynamic set of columns. I’ve found couple of examples on SO and end up with the following:

CREATE or replace FUNCTION getColumn(_column1 text, _column2 text, _column3 text, _table text)
  RETURNS TABLE(cmf1 text, cmf2 text, cmf3 text) AS $$
BEGIN
    RETURN QUERY EXECUTE 
        'SELECT ' 
            || quote_ident(_column1)::text || ' as cmf1,'
            || quote_ident(_column2)::text || ' as cmf2,'
            || quote_ident(_column3)::text || ' as cmf3'
        ' FROM '
            || quote_ident(_table); 
END;
 $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

I need this function to work only with varchar/text columns so I created this testing table:

create table test20130205 (
    a text,
    b text,
    c varchar,
    d text)
;

Finally, I can run some tests:

select * from getColumn('a','b','d','test20130205');
-- ok
select * from getColumn('a','b','c','test20130205');
-- error
ERROR:  structure of query does not match function result type
DETAIL:  Returned type character varying does not match expected type text in column 3.
CONTEXT:  PL/pgSQL function getcolumn(text,text,text,text) line 3 at RETURN QUERY

It seems like type for column c (varchar) is checked before cast – this seems strange, but I guess I’ve missed something.

How can I fix my function?

(PostgreSQL 9.1)

Answer 1

In your current function, the casts to text do not apply to the output columns values, they apply to their names (the result of quote_ident).

The cast should be moved inside the query itself:

CREATE or replace FUNCTION getColumn(_column1 text, _column2 text, _column3 text, _table text)
  RETURNS TABLE(cmf1 text, cmf2 text, cmf3 text) AS $$
BEGIN
    RETURN QUERY EXECUTE 
        'SELECT ' 
            || quote_ident(_column1) || '::text as cmf1,'
            || quote_ident(_column2) || '::text as cmf2,'
            || quote_ident(_column3) || '::text as cmf3'
        ' FROM '
            || quote_ident(_table); 
END;
 $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;