Refactor a PL/pgSQL function to return the output of various SELECT queries

Question

I wrote a function that outputs a PostgreSQL SELECT query well formed in text form. Now I don\'t want to output a text anymore, but actually run the generated <

Answer 1

I'm sorry to say but your question is very unclear. However below you'll find a self contained example how to create and use a function that returns a cursor variable. Hope it helps !

begin;

create table test (id serial, data1 text, data2 text);

insert into test(data1, data2) values('one', 'un');
insert into test(data1, data2) values('two', 'deux');
insert into test(data1, data2) values('three', 'trois');

create function generate_query(query_name refcursor, columns text[])
returns refcursor 
as $$
begin
  open query_name for execute 
    'select id, ' || array_to_string(columns, ',') || ' from test order by id';
  return query_name;
end;
$$ language plpgsql;

select generate_query('english', array['data1']);
fetch all in english;

select generate_query('french', array['data2']);
fetch all in french;
move absolute 0 from french; -- do it again !
fetch all in french;

select generate_query('all_langs', array['data1','data2']);
fetch all in all_langs;

-- this will raise in runtime as there is no data3 column in the test table
select generate_query('broken', array['data3']);

rollback;