Re: textarray option for file FDW

On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 02:29, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:
> "textarray". This option would require that the foreign table have exactly
> one field, of type text[], and would compose all the field strings read from
> the file for each record into the array (however many there are).
>
>   CREATE FOREIGN TABLE arr_text (
>        t text[]
>   )  SERVER file_server
>   OPTIONS (format 'csv', filename '/path/to/ragged.csv', textarray 'true');

FOREIGN TABLE has stable definitions, so there are some issues
that doesn't exist in COPY command:
- when the type of the last column is not a text[]
- when the last column is changed by ALTER FOREIGN TABLE ADD/DROP COLUMN

BTW, those options could be specified in column options rather than table
options. But we don't have column option syntax in the current proposal.

  CREATE FOREIGN TABLE arr_text (
       i integer OPTION (column 1), -- column position in csv file
       t text[] OPTION (column 'all the rest'),
       d date OPTION (column 2)
  )  SERVER file_server
  OPTIONS (format 'csv', filename '/path/to/ragged.csv');

--
Itagaki Takahiro