Postgresql tables exists, but getting “relation does not exist” when querying

Question

I have a postgresql db with a number of tables. If I query:

SELECT column_name
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name=\"my_table\";

Answer 1

You can try:

SELECT * 
FROM public."my_table"

Don't forget double quotes near my_table.

Answer 2

I had to include double quotes with the table name.

db=> \d
                           List of relations
 Schema |                     Name                      | Type  | Owner 
--------+-----------------------------------------------+-------+-------
 public | COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES                      | table | dan
 ...

db=> \d COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES
Did not find any relation named "COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES".

???

Double quotes:

db=> \d "COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES"
                         Table "public.COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES"
          Column          |            Type             | Collation | Nullable | Default 
--------------------------+-----------------------------+-----------+----------+---------
 ID                       | integer                     |           | not null | 
 ...

Lots and lots of double quotes:

db=> select ID from COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES limit 1;
ERROR:  relation "commondata_nwcg_agencies" does not exist
LINE 1: select ID from COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES limit 1;
                       ^
db=> select ID from "COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES" limit 1;
ERROR:  column "id" does not exist
LINE 1: select ID from "COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES" limit 1;
               ^
db=> select "ID" from "COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES" limit 1;
 ID 
----
  1
(1 row)

This is postgres 11. The CREATE TABLE statements from this dump had double quotes as well:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS "COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES";

CREATE TABLE "COMMONDATA_NWCG_AGENCIES" (
...

Answer 3

I had the same problem that occurred after I restored data from a postgres dumped db.

My dump file had the command below from where things started going south.

    SELECT pg_catalog.set_config('search_path', '', false);

Solutions:

1. Probably remove it or change that false to be true.
2. Create a private schema that will be used to access all the tables.

The command above simply deactivates all the publicly accessible schemas.

Check more on the documentation here: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/ecpg-connect.html

Answer 4

I hit this error and it turned out my connection string was pointing to another database, obviously the table didn't exist there.

I spent a few hours on this and no one else has mentioned to double check your connection string.

Answer 5

The error can be caused by access restrictions. Solution:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE my_database TO my_user;

Answer 6

In my case, the dump file I restored had these commands.

CREATE SCHEMA employees;
SET search_path = employees, pg_catalog;

I've commented those and restored again. The issue got resolved