TODO item: Accept aliases for values in ROW(...) constructor

From: Craig Ringer <craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
To: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: TODO item: Accept aliases for values in ROW(...) constructor
Date: 2014-11-25 01:32:05
Message-ID: 5473DC15.9060504@2ndquadrant.com
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Hi all

Especially with the introduction of json support, but also in the past
with hstore and other things, I've sometimes found myself wishing I
could provide aliases in an anonymous row constructor, e.g.

ROW(x AS something, y AS somethingelse)

The same thing can be done using a scalar subquery wrapping a
subquery-in-FROM returning a single row, but it's pretty ugly:

(SELECT r FROM (SELECT x AS something, y AS somethingelse) r)

That's what I've done to produce json a lot, though, and will need to
continue to do so until 9.4's json_build_object etc are in the wild.

While that'll solve the need for json, I'm sure others will come up. So
in case someone feels like exploring the parser a little, does it seem
reasonable to add ROW(...) with aliases to the TODO?

Or, alternately, and perhaps more generally useful, allow rowtype
specifications for anonymous records outside function-call context, like:

ROW(x1,y1) AS r(x integer, y integer)

Related:

http://stackoverflow.com/q/13227142/398670

--
Craig Ringer http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

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