UPDATE a whole row in PL/pgSQL

Question

I have plpgsql function:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION test() RETURNS VOID AS
$$
DECLARE
    my_row my_table%ROWTYPE;
BEGIN
    SELECT * INTO my_row FROM my_tab         


        

Answer 1

I managed to get this working in PLPGSQL in a couple of lines of code.

Given a table called table in a schema called example, and a record of the same type declared as _record, you can update all the columns in the table to match the record using the following hack:

declare _record example.table;

...

-- get the columns in the correct order, as a string
select string_agg(format('%I', column_name), ',' order by ordinal_position)
  into _columns
  from information_schema.columns
  where table_schema='example' and table_name='table';

execute 'update example.table set (' || _columns || ') = row($1.*) where pkey=$2'
  using _record, _record.pkey;

In the above example, of course, _record.pkey is the table's primary key.