Dump database to a script (.sql) file

Extract/Dump the database contents to a script (.sql) file

pg_dump -f ~/path/to/file.sql $YOUR_DATABASE_URL

Run a script (.sql) from file on a database

Run SQL commands from a file on a database

psql $YOUR_DATABASE_URL -f ~/path/to/file.sql

Check whether there is any row in the table matching your condition

select exists(select 1 from your_table where your_condition)

Use single-quote inside a string

Put two single-quotes (‘) wherever you want to use a single-quote inside the string

select * from people where full_name = 'Travis O''Connor'

Convert timestamptz to a timestamp in a particular timezone

Assuming created_at is a column in table people with type timstamptz and we want to see what those timestamps are in IST (Asia/Kolkata or Asia/Calcutta)

select created_at at time zone 'Asia/Kolkata' as shifted from people

Format timestamp/date

Assuming birthdate is a column in table people with type date and we want to display those values in 10 Oct 2021 format

select to_char(birthdate, 'DD Mon YYYY') from people

Refer to official docs for more and/or latest details

Auto-populate values for created_at and updated_at columns

We first need to create a function which would update the value of updated_at column every time data in a row changes

create or replace function update_modified_timestamp() returns trigger
language plpgsql as
$$
BEGIN
    new.updated_at := current_timestamp;
    return new;
END;
$$;

Then we need to provide default values to columns when defining table schema

create table people (
    id integer primary key,
    created_at timestamptz not null default now(),
    updated_at timestamptz not null default now(),
    name text not null
);

At last we need to add a trigger to each table where we want to auto-update the value of updated_at

create trigger update_timestamp before update on people
for each row execute procedure update_modified_timestamp();

Generate list of months between two dates

This will give us a list of dates for the first day of every month that falls between earlier_date and later_date. Taking the example of earlier_date = '2022-11-16' and later_date = '2023-02-14', it will return November 2022, December 2022, January 2023 and February 2023.

select generate_series(
    cast(date_trunc('month', earlier_date) as date),
    cast(date_trunc('month', later_date) as date),
    interval '1 month'
);

Count rows that satisfy a condition

If we want to count the number of payments where payment_amount is greater than 100 then we use a filter on the count aggregate:

select customer_id,
    count(payment_id) filter (where payment_amount > 100)
from payments
group by customer_id;

Get first entry in each group

If we want to see the payment_id of the highest amount of payment for each customer_id then we need to do:

select distinct customer_id,
    first_value(payment_id) over (partition by customer_id order by payment_amount desc) as highest_payment_id
from payments

Note that you don’t need to specify a group by clause for the overall query in this case.

Map an array of ids to matching data from another table

If we have two tables, people and groups, where people has a column group_ids which is an array of ids from groups, we can map the array of ids to the matching name from groups using the following query:

select
    p.email as email,
    coalesce(groups.names, '') as group_names

from people as p
    inner join (
        select string_agg(g.name, ', ') as names, person.id as person_id

        from entity_groups as g
            inner join (
                select id, unnest(group_ids) as group_id
                from people
            ) as person on person.group_id = g.id

        group by person.id
    ) as groups on groups.person_id = p.id

order by email;

It is a three-step process, listed inside to out (i.e. the innermost query is executed first):

1. Convert the group_ids array from people into a table of person_id and group_id using unnest
2. Join the group_id with the id of groups to get the name of the group
3. Aggregate the name of the groups into a comma-separated string using string_agg

Make a column unique after creating it

If we have a table people with a column email and we want to make it unique after we have already added it to table:

alter table people add unique (email);

Make a colum non-nullable after creating it

If we have a table people with a column email and we want to make it non-nullable after we have already added it to table:

alter table people alter column email set not null;

Have a great day people 👋