OID's

Hi pgsql-general,

(all examples are pseudo-code)

We really love PostgreSQL, it's getting better and better, there is just
one thing, something that has always led to some dislike: OID's

I understand why they did it and all, but still.

To make life easier, it's always good to find a general way of doing things.

But sometimes it just takes a lot more time and effort to find something
you feel even mildly comvertable with.

This is one of those times.

Some people use this way of getting the real insertID:

insert into whatever (text) values ('something');

oid = insertID ();

select id from whatever where whatever.oid = oid;

you get the general idea.

But OID's are optional now... so, not terrible great.

Or with the use of PG's nextval () (which is the preferred/intended
PostgreSQL-way and I agree):

id = nextval ("whatever_id_seq");
insert into whatever (id, text) values (id, 'something');

Something that works always... better, but you need to know the name of
the sequence, bummer.

So we constructed this query:

SELECT
pg_attrdef.adsrc
FROM
pg_attrdef,
pg_class,
pg_attribute
WHERE
pg_attrdef.adnum = pg_attribute.attnum
AND pg_attrdef.adrelid = pg_class.oid
AND pg_attribute.attrelid = pg_class.oid
AND pg_attribute.attname = 'id'
AND pg_class.relname = 'whatever'

(pg_class is a table that holds for instance table-names, etc.,
pg_attribute + pg_attrdef are table's with field-information)

it will result in the default-value of a field of a table..., which means
you get something like this:

nextval('whatever_id_seq'::text)

so, now you have the sequence..., or atleast a way to get to the nextval.

All you have to do is this:

SELECT nextval('whatever_id_seq'::text);

done.

So, now all you have to know is:
- table
- field with ID + default-value
- insert query

Well, maybe that's crazy too, but atleast it's something that'll work.

Probably not the best way, but it's a way.

We're just wondering what people think about such an approach.

Have a nice day,
Lennie.

PS This has been tested with:
- 6.5.3 (Debian Linux Package)
- 8.0 Beta 3 Win32 (msi-install)

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