Re: copy_from does not stop reading after an error

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 14:18, Marko Kreen <markokr(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> No, the error message should arrive immediately. But it may be deficiency
> of
> libpq that you cannot aquire it before ending the copy.
>

I have analyzed the PostgreSQL protocol using Wireshark (an open source
packet analyzer), and I confirm that the PostgreSQL backend, while doing a
COPY ... FROM STDIN, reports errors as soon as possible (especially errors
related to invalid data).

Therefore, the "late" reporting of errors while doing a COPY ... FROM STDIN
is not a limitation of the underlying protocol; it is a limitation (or a
design choice) of the libpq library.

It looks like this is a well known issue because it is listed on the todo
list:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Todo#COPY

And was discussed before:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-04/msg01169.php

> I'm not sure about that actually. It should be possible to call
> select() & PQconsumeInput
> between copy calls, thus also PQgetResult to get the error.
>

I have tried that, and many other things, and I have carefully read libpq
source code, and my understanding is that it is impossible with the current
implementation of libpq.

It is impossible because the function pqParseInput3 (file fe-protocol3.c)
does not parse error responses while the connection is in PGASYNC_COPY_IN
state. We have to call PQputCopyEnd to switch the connection to PGASYNC_BUSY
and start error messages parsing.

Can Marko or someone else confirm this analysis? Any idea to improve that?

Regards,

Nicolas Grilly

PS : Considering that both psycopg2 and psql are built on top of libpq, this
a quite logical they behave the same regarding late reporting of copy
errors, contrary to pg8000 that could easily read, parse and report the
errors early.