Question

I’m trying to do this in a SQL script that I feed into psql:

ALTER DATABASE dbname SET SEARCH_PATH TO myschema,public

but I need dbname to be dynamically set to the current database rather than hard coded.

Is this possible in PostgreSQL? I tried this but it doesn’t work:

ALTER DATABASE (select current_database()) SET SEARCH_PATH TO myschema,public;

Answer 1

You cannot execute such a statement in plain SQL, where identifiers cannot be parametrized.
You could write a plpgsql function to execute dynamic SQL.

With PostgreSQL 9.0 or later you can also use a DO statement:

DO $$
BEGIN
EXECUTE '
ALTER DATABASE ' || current_database() || ' SET SEARCH_PATH TO myschema,public';
END; $$;