Several months ago I learned from an answer on Stack Overflow how to perform multiple updates at once in MySQL using the following syntax:
INSERT INTO table (id, field, field2) VALUES (1, A, X), (2, B, Y), (3, C, Z)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE field=VALUES(Col1), field2=VALUES(Col2);
I've now switched over to PostgreSQL and apparently this is not correct. It's referring to all the correct tables so I assume it's a matter of different keywords being used but I'm not sure where in the PostgreSQL documentation this is covered.
To clarify, I want to insert several things and if they already exist to update them.
PostgreSQL since version 9.5 has UPSERT syntax, with ON CONFLICT clause. with the following syntax (similar to MySQL)
INSERT INTO the_table (id, column_1, column_2)
VALUES (1, 'A', 'X'), (2, 'B', 'Y'), (3, 'C', 'Z')
ON CONFLICT (id) DO UPDATE
SET column_1 = excluded.column_1,
column_2 = excluded.column_2;
Searching postgresql's email group archives for "upsert" leads to finding an example of doing what you possibly want to do, in the manual:
Example 38-2. Exceptions with UPDATE/INSERT
This example uses exception handling to perform either UPDATE or INSERT, as appropriate:
CREATE TABLE db (a INT PRIMARY KEY, b TEXT);
CREATE FUNCTION merge_db(key INT, data TEXT) RETURNS VOID AS
$$
BEGIN
LOOP
-- first try to update the key
-- note that "a" must be unique
UPDATE db SET b = data WHERE a = key;
IF found THEN
RETURN;
END IF;
-- not there, so try to insert the key
-- if someone else inserts the same key concurrently,
-- we could get a unique-key failure
BEGIN
INSERT INTO db(a,b) VALUES (key, data);
RETURN;
EXCEPTION WHEN unique_violation THEN
-- do nothing, and loop to try the UPDATE again
END;
END LOOP;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;
SELECT merge_db(1, 'david');
SELECT merge_db(1, 'dennis');
There's possibly an example of how to do this in bulk, using CTEs in 9.1 and above, in the hackers mailing list:
WITH foos AS (SELECT (UNNEST(%foo[])).*)
updated as (UPDATE foo SET foo.a = foos.a ... RETURNING foo.id)
INSERT INTO foo SELECT foos.* FROM foos LEFT JOIN updated USING(id)
WHERE updated.id IS NULL;
See a_horse_with_no_name's answer for a clearer example.
Warning: this is not safe if executed from multiple sessions at the same time (see caveats below).
Another clever way to do an "UPSERT" in postgresql is to do two sequential UPDATE/INSERT statements that are each designed to succeed or have no effect.
UPDATE table SET field='C', field2='Z' WHERE id=3;
INSERT INTO table (id, field, field2)
SELECT 3, 'C', 'Z'
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM table WHERE id=3);
The UPDATE will succeed if a row with "id=3" already exists, otherwise it has no effect.
The INSERT will succeed only if row with "id=3" does not already exist.
You can combine these two into a single string and run them both with a single SQL statement execute from your application. Running them together in a single transaction is highly recommended.
This works very well when run in isolation or on a locked table, but is subject to race conditions that mean it might still fail with duplicate key error if a row is inserted concurrently, or might terminate with no row inserted when a row is deleted concurrently. A SERIALIZABLE transaction on PostgreSQL 9.1 or higher will handle it reliably at the cost of a very high serialization failure rate, meaning you'll have to retry a lot. See why is upsert so complicated, which discusses this case in more detail.
This approach is also subject to lost updates in read committed isolation unless the application checks the affected row counts and verifies that either the insert or the update affected a row.
With PostgreSQL 9.1 this can be achieved using a writeable CTE (common table expression):
WITH new_values (id, field1, field2) as (
values
(1, 'A', 'X'),
(2, 'B', 'Y'),
(3, 'C', 'Z')
),
upsert as
(
update mytable m
set field1 = nv.field1,
field2 = nv.field2
FROM new_values nv
WHERE m.id = nv.id
RETURNING m.*
)
INSERT INTO mytable (id, field1, field2)
SELECT id, field1, field2
FROM new_values
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1
FROM upsert up
WHERE up.id = new_values.id)
See these blog entries:
Upserting via Writeable CTE
WAITING FOR 9.1 – WRITABLE CTE
WHY IS UPSERT SO COMPLICATED?
Note that this solution does not prevent a unique key violation but it is not vulnerable to lost updates.
See the follow up by Craig Ringer on dba.stackexchange.com
In PostgreSQL 9.5 and newer you can use INSERT ... ON CONFLICT UPDATE.
See the documentation.
A MySQL INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE can be directly rephrased to a ON CONFLICT UPDATE. Neither is SQL-standard syntax, they're both database-specific extensions. There are good reasons MERGE wasn't used for this, a new syntax wasn't created just for fun. (MySQL's syntax also has issues that mean it wasn't adopted directly).
e.g. given setup:
CREATE TABLE tablename (a integer primary key, b integer, c integer);
INSERT INTO tablename (a, b, c) values (1, 2, 3);
the MySQL query:
INSERT INTO tablename (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=c+1;
becomes:
INSERT INTO tablename (a, b, c) values (1, 2, 10)
ON CONFLICT (a) DO UPDATE SET c = tablename.c + 1;
Differences:
You must specify the column name (or unique constraint name) to use for the uniqueness check. That's the ON CONFLICT (columnname) DO
The keyword SET must be used, as if this was a normal UPDATE statement
It has some nice features too:
You can have a WHERE clause on your UPDATE (letting you effectively turn ON CONFLICT UPDATE into ON CONFLICT IGNORE for certain values)
The proposed-for-insertion values are available as the row-variable EXCLUDED, which has the same structure as the target table. You can get the original values in the table by using the table name. So in this case EXCLUDED.c will be 10 (because that's what we tried to insert) and "table".c will be 3 because that's the current value in the table. You can use either or both in the SET expressions and WHERE clause.
For background on upsert see How to UPSERT (MERGE, INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE UPDATE) in PostgreSQL?
I was looking for the same thing when I came here, but the lack of a generic "upsert" function botherd me a bit so I thought you could just pass the update and insert sql as arguments on that function form the manual
that would look like this:
CREATE FUNCTION upsert (sql_update TEXT, sql_insert TEXT)
RETURNS VOID
LANGUAGE plpgsql
AS $$
BEGIN
LOOP
-- first try to update
EXECUTE sql_update;
-- check if the row is found
IF FOUND THEN
RETURN;
END IF;
-- not found so insert the row
BEGIN
EXECUTE sql_insert;
RETURN;
EXCEPTION WHEN unique_violation THEN
-- do nothing and loop
END;
END LOOP;
END;
$$;
and perhaps to do what you initially wanted to do, batch "upsert", you could use Tcl to split the sql_update and loop the individual updates, the preformance hit will be very small see http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2006-04/msg00557.php
the highest cost is executing the query from your code, on the database side the execution cost is much smaller
There is no simple command to do it.
The most correct approach is to use function, like the one from docs.
Another solution (although not that safe) is to do update with returning, check which rows were updates, and insert the rest of them
Something along the lines of:
update table
set column = x.column
from (values (1,'aa'),(2,'bb'),(3,'cc')) as x (id, column)
where table.id = x.id
returning id;
assuming id:2 was returned:
insert into table (id, column) values (1, 'aa'), (3, 'cc');
Of course it will bail out sooner or later (in concurrent environment), as there is clear race condition in here, but usually it will work.
Here's a longer and more comprehensive article on the topic.
I use this function merge
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION merge_tabla(key INT, data TEXT)
RETURNS void AS
$BODY$
BEGIN
IF EXISTS(SELECT a FROM tabla WHERE a = key)
THEN
UPDATE tabla SET b = data WHERE a = key;
RETURN;
ELSE
INSERT INTO tabla(a,b) VALUES (key, data);
RETURN;
END IF;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql
Personally, I've set up a "rule" attached to the insert statement. Say you had a "dns" table that recorded dns hits per customer on a per-time basis:
CREATE TABLE dns (
"time" timestamp without time zone NOT NULL,
customer_id integer NOT NULL,
hits integer
);
You wanted to be able to re-insert rows with updated values, or create them if they didn't exist already. Keyed on the customer_id and the time. Something like this:
CREATE RULE replace_dns AS
ON INSERT TO dns
WHERE (EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM dns WHERE ((dns."time" = new."time")
AND (dns.customer_id = new.customer_id))))
DO INSTEAD UPDATE dns
SET hits = new.hits
WHERE ((dns."time" = new."time") AND (dns.customer_id = new.customer_id));
Update: This has the potential to fail if simultaneous inserts are happening, as it will generate unique_violation exceptions. However, the non-terminated transaction will continue and succeed, and you just need to repeat the terminated transaction.
However, if there are tons of inserts happening all the time, you will want to put a table lock around the insert statements: SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE locking will prevent any operations that could insert, delete or update rows in your target table. However, updates that do not update the unique key are safe, so if you no operation will do this, use advisory locks instead.
Also, the COPY command does not use RULES, so if you're inserting with COPY, you'll need to use triggers instead.
Similar to most-liked answer, but works slightly faster:
WITH upsert AS (UPDATE spider_count SET tally=1 WHERE date='today' RETURNING *)
INSERT INTO spider_count (spider, tally) SELECT 'Googlebot', 1 WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM upsert)
(source: http://www.the-art-of-web.com/sql/upsert/)
I custom "upsert" function above, if you want to INSERT AND REPLACE :
`
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION upsert(sql_insert text, sql_update text)
RETURNS void AS
$BODY$
BEGIN
-- first try to insert and after to update. Note : insert has pk and update not...
EXECUTE sql_insert;
RETURN;
EXCEPTION WHEN unique_violation THEN
EXECUTE sql_update;
IF FOUND THEN
RETURN;
END IF;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql VOLATILE
COST 100;
ALTER FUNCTION upsert(text, text)
OWNER TO postgres;`
And after to execute, do something like this :
SELECT upsert($$INSERT INTO ...$$,$$UPDATE... $$)
Is important to put double dollar-comma to avoid compiler errors
check the speed...
According the PostgreSQL documentation of the INSERT statement, handling the ON DUPLICATE KEY case is not supported. That part of the syntax is a proprietary MySQL extension.
I have the same issue for managing account settings as name value pairs.
The design criteria is that different clients could have different settings sets.
My solution, similar to JWP is to bulk erase and replace, generating the merge record within your application.
This is pretty bulletproof, platform independent and since there are never more than about 20 settings per client, this is only 3 fairly low load db calls - probably the fastest method.
The alternative of updating individual rows - checking for exceptions then inserting - or some combination of is hideous code, slow and often breaks because (as mentioned above) non standard SQL exception handling changing from db to db - or even release to release.
#This is pseudo-code - within the application:
BEGIN TRANSACTION - get transaction lock
SELECT all current name value pairs where id = $id into a hash record
create a merge record from the current and update record
(set intersection where shared keys in new win, and empty values in new are deleted).
DELETE all name value pairs where id = $id
COPY/INSERT merged records
END TRANSACTION
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION save_user(_id integer, _name character varying)
RETURNS boolean AS
$BODY$
BEGIN
UPDATE users SET name = _name WHERE id = _id;
IF FOUND THEN
RETURN true;
END IF;
BEGIN
INSERT INTO users (id, name) VALUES (_id, _name);
EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN
UPDATE users SET name = _name WHERE id = _id;
END;
RETURN TRUE;
END;
$BODY$
LANGUAGE plpgsql VOLATILE STRICT
For merging small sets, using the above function is fine. However, if you are merging large amounts of data, I'd suggest looking into http://mbk.projects.postgresql.org
The current best practice that I'm aware of is:
COPY new/updated data into temp table (sure, or you can do INSERT if the cost is ok)
Acquire Lock [optional] (advisory is preferable to table locks, IMO)
Merge. (the fun part)
UPDATE will return the number of modified rows. If you use JDBC (Java), you can then check this value against 0 and, if no rows have been affected, fire INSERT instead. If you use some other programming language, maybe the number of the modified rows still can be obtained, check documentation.
This may not be as elegant but you have much simpler SQL that is more trivial to use from the calling code. Differently, if you write the ten line script in PL/PSQL, you probably should have a unit test of one or another kind just for it alone.
Edit: This does not work as expected. Unlike the accepted answer, this produces unique key violations when two processes repeatedly call upsert_foo concurrently.
Eureka! I figured out a way to do it in one query: use UPDATE ... RETURNING to test if any rows were affected:
CREATE TABLE foo (k INT PRIMARY KEY, v TEXT);
CREATE FUNCTION update_foo(k INT, v TEXT)
RETURNS SETOF INT AS $$
UPDATE foo SET v = $2 WHERE k = $1 RETURNING $1
$$ LANGUAGE sql;
CREATE FUNCTION upsert_foo(k INT, v TEXT)
RETURNS VOID AS $$
INSERT INTO foo
SELECT $1, $2
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT update_foo($1, $2))
$$ LANGUAGE sql;
The UPDATE has to be done in a separate procedure because, unfortunately, this is a syntax error:
... WHERE NOT EXISTS (UPDATE ...)
Now it works as desired:
SELECT upsert_foo(1, 'hi');
SELECT upsert_foo(1, 'bye');
SELECT upsert_foo(3, 'hi');
SELECT upsert_foo(3, 'bye');
PostgreSQL >= v15
Big news on this topic as in PostgreSQL v15, it is possible to use MERGE command. In fact, this long awaited feature was listed the first of the improvements of the v15 release.
This is similar to INSERT ... ON CONFLICT but more batch-oriented. It has a powerful WHEN MATCHED vs WHEN NOT MATCHED structure that gives the ability to INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE on such conditions.
It not only eases bulk changes, but it even adds more control that tradition UPSERT and INSERT ... ON CONFLICT
Take a look at this very complete sample from official page:
MERGE INTO wines w
USING wine_stock_changes s
ON s.winename = w.winename
WHEN NOT MATCHED AND s.stock_delta > 0 THEN
INSERT VALUES(s.winename, s.stock_delta)
WHEN MATCHED AND w.stock + s.stock_delta > 0 THEN
UPDATE SET stock = w.stock + s.stock_delta
WHEN MATCHED THEN
DELETE;
PostgreSQL v9, v10, v11, v12, v13, v14
If version is under v15 and over v9.5 , probably best choice is to use UPSERT syntax, with ON CONFLICT clause
Here is the example how to do upsert with params and without special sql constructions
if you have special condition (sometimes you can't use 'on conflict' because you can't create constraint)
WITH upd AS
(
update view_layer set metadata=:metadata where layer_id = :layer_id and view_id = :view_id returning id
)
insert into view_layer (layer_id, view_id, metadata)
(select :layer_id layer_id, :view_id view_id, :metadata metadata FROM view_layer l
where NOT EXISTS(select id FROM upd WHERE id IS NOT NULL) limit 1)
returning id
maybe it will be helpful
I'm having a problem with my sql query. I need to insert a data that needs to be checked first if it is existing or not. If the data is existing the sql query must return it, if not insert and return it. I already google it but the result is not quite suitable to my problem. I already read this.
Check if a row exists, otherwise insert
How to 'insert if not exists' in MySQL?
Here is a query that' I'm thinking.
INSERT INTO #tablename(#field, #conditional_field, #field, #conditional_field)
VALUES(
"value of field"
(SQL QUERY THAT CHECK IF THERE IS AN EXISTING DATA, IF NOT INSERT THE DATA and RETURN IT, IF YES return it),
"value of feild",
(SQL QUERY THAT CHECK IF THERE IS AN EXISTING DATA, IF NOT INSERT THE DATA and RETURN IT, IF YES return it)
);
Please take note that the conditional field is a required field so it can't be NULL.
Your tag set is quite weird, I'm unsure you require all the technologies listed but as long as Firebird is concerned there's UPDATE OR INSERT (link) construction.
The code could be like
UPDATE OR INSERT INTO aTable
VALUES (...)
MATCHING (ID, SomeColumn)
RETURNING ID, SomeColumn
Note that this will only work for PK match, no complex logic available. If that's not an option, you could use EXECUTE BLOCK which has all the power of stored procedures but is executed as usual query. And you'll get into concurrent update error if two clients execute updates at one time.
You could split it out into 2 steps
1. run a select statement to retrieve the rows that match your valus. select count (*) will give you the number of rows
2. If zero rows found, then run the insert to add the new values.
Alternatively, you could create a unique index form all your columns. If you try to insert a row where all the values exist, an error will be returned. You could then run a select statement to get the ID for this existing row. Otherwise, the insert will work.
You can check with if exists(select count(*) from #tablename) to see if there is data, but with insert into you need to insert data for all columns, so if there is only #field missing, you cant insert values with insert into, you will need to update the table and go with a little different method. And im not sure, why do you check every row? You know for every row what is missing? Are you comparing with some other table?
You can achieve it using MySQL stored procedure
Sample MySQL stored procedure
CREATE TABLE MyTable
(`ID` int, `ConditionField` varchar(10))
;
INSERT INTO MyTable
(`ID`, `ConditionField`)
VALUES
(1, 'Condition1'),
(1, 'Condition2')
;
CREATE PROCEDURE simpleproc (IN identifier INT,ConditionData varchar(10))
BEGIN
IF (SELECT ID FROM MyTable WHERE `ConditionField`=ConditionData) THEN
BEGIN
SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE `ConditionField`=ConditionData;
END;
ELSE
BEGIN
INSERT INTO MyTable VALUES (identifier,ConditionData);
SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE `ConditionField`=ConditionData;
END;
END IF;
END//
To Call stored procedure
CALL simpleproc(3,'Condition3');
DEMO
LAST_INSERT_ID() returns the most recent id generated for the current connection by an auto increment column, but how do I tell if that value is from the last insert and not from a previous insert on the same connection?
Suppose I am using a connection from a pool, which may have inserted a row before I got the connection, and I execute an conditional insert:
insert into mytable (colA)
select 'foo' from bar
where <some condition>;
select LAST_INSERT_ID();
I have no way of knowing if the value returned is from my insert.
One way I thought of is:
#previousId := LAST_INSERT_ID();
insert into mytable (colA)
select 'foo' from bar
where <some condition>;
select if(LAST_INSERT_ID() != #previousId, LAST_INSERT_ID(), null);
Is there a way to "clear" the LAST_INSERT_ID() value, so I know it's a fresh value caused by my SQL if a non-zero value is returned?
I agree with #Digital Chris's answer, that you should not be determining whether an insertion succeeded or failed via inspection of the value returned by LAST_INSERT_ID(): there are more direct routes, such as the affected row count. Nevertheless, there might still be some requirement to obtain a "clean" value from LAST_INSERT_ID().
Of course, one problem with your proposed solution (of comparing against the pre-insertion value) is that it might happen that the insertion was successful and that its assigned auto-incremented value is coincidentally the same as that of the previous insertion (presumably on another table). The comparison could therefore lead to an assumption that the insertion failed, whereas it had in fact succeeded.
I recommend that, if at all possible, you avoid using the LAST_INSERT_ID() SQL function in preference for the mysql_insert_id() API call (via your driver). As explained under the documentation for the latter:
mysql_insert_id() returns 0 if the previous statement does not use an AUTO_INCREMENT value. If you need to save the value for later, be sure to call mysql_insert_id() immediately after the statement that generates the value.
[ deletia ]
The reason for the differences between LAST_INSERT_ID() and mysql_insert_id() is that LAST_INSERT_ID() is made easy to use in scripts while mysql_insert_id() tries to provide more exact information about what happens to the AUTO_INCREMENT column.
In any event, as documented under LAST_INSERT_ID(expr):
If expr is given as an argument to LAST_INSERT_ID(), the value of the argument is returned by the function and is remembered as the next value to be returned by LAST_INSERT_ID().
Therefore, before performing your INSERT, you could reset with:
SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID(NULL);
This also ought to reset the value returned by mysql_insert_id(), although the documentation suggests the call to LAST_INSERT_ID(expr) must take place within an INSERT or UPDATE statement—may require testing to verify. In any event, it ought to be pretty trivial to create such a no-op statement if so required:
INSERT INTO my_table (my_column) SELECT NULL WHERE LAST_INSERT_ID(NULL);
It may be worth noting that one can also set the identity and last_insert_id system variables (however these only affect the value returned by LAST_INSERT_ID() and not by mysql_insert_id()):
SET ##last_insert_id := NULL;
You speculate that you might get the previous LAST_INSERT_ID(), but practically, I don't see where this case would happen. If you're doing a conditional insert, you would HAVE to check whether it was successful before taking next steps. For example, you would always use ROW_COUNT() to check inserted/updated records. Pseudo-code:
insert into mytable (colA)
select 'foo' from bar
where <some condition>;
IF ROW_COUNT() > 0
select LAST_INSERT_ID();
-- ...use selected last_insert_id for other updates/inserts...
END IF;
Use ROW_COUNT() to determine if your conditional insert attempt was successful, and then return LAST_INSERT_ID() or a default value based on that:
select IF(ROW_COUNT() > 0, LAST_INSERT_ID(), 0);
Since LAST_INSERT_ID() is full of gotchas, I use an AFTER INSERT trigger to record the ID in a log table and in a manner consistent with the problem I'm trying to solve.
In your scenario, since the insert is conditional, use a unqiue identifier to "tag" the insert, then check for the presence of that tag in the insert log. If the identifying tag is present, your insert occurred and you have the inserted ID. If the identifying tag is not present, no insert occurred.
Reference Implementation
DELIMITER $$
CREATE TRIGGER MyTable_AI AFTER INSERT ON MyTable FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
INSERT INTO MyTable_InsertLog (myTableId, ident) VALUES (NEW.myTableId, COALESCE(#tag, CONNECTION_ID()));
END $$
DELIMITER ;
CREATE TABLE MyTable_InsertLog (
myTableId BIGINT UNSIGNED PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL REFERENCES MyTable (myTableId),
tag CHAR(32) NOT NULL
);
Example Usage
SET #tag=MD5('A');
INSERT INTO MyTable SELECT NULL,colA FROM Foo WHERE colA='whatever';
SELECT myTableId FROM MyTable_InsertLog WHERE tag=#tag;
DELETE FROM MyTable_InsertLog WHERE tag=#tag;
If the insert succeeds, you will get rows from the select -- and those rows will have your ID. No rows, no insert. Either way, delete results from the insert log so that you can reuse that tag in subsequent calls.
The LAST_INSERT_ID() function has a rather narrow scope of application: as MySQL does not support SQL SEQUENCEs, this is used to create a transaction that INSERTs data consistently into multiple tables, if one references the surrogate key from the other table:
CREATE TABLE foo (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT, value INTEGER NOT NULL);
CREATE TABLE bar (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT, fooref INTEGER NOT NULL);
INSERT INTO foo(value) VALUES ('1');
INSERT INTO bar(fooref) VALUES (LAST_INSERT_ID());
If you really want to use this in a conditional insert, you need to make the second INSERT conditional as well by joining the inserted values against the SELECT from the first INSERT and subsequently throwing away the extra columns (so that the second INSERT also has zero or one row).
I'd advise against that, though. The conditional insert in this manner is already somewhat brittle, and building on top of it will not add stability to your application.