Completely copying a postgres table with SQL

Question

DISCLAIMER: This question is similar to the stack overflow question here, but none of those answers work for my problem, as I will explain later.

I\'m t

Answer 1

Well, you're gonna have to do some of this stuff by hand, unfortunately. But it can all be done from something like psql. The first command is simple enough:

select * into newtable from oldtable

This will create newtable with oldtable's data but not indexes. Then you've got to create the indexes and sequences etc on your own. You can get a list of all the indexes on a table with the command:

select indexdef from pg_indexes where tablename='oldtable';

Then run psql -E to access your db and use \d to look at the old table. You can then mangle these two queries to get the info on the sequences:

SELECT c.oid,
  n.nspname,
  c.relname
FROM pg_catalog.pg_class c
     LEFT JOIN pg_catalog.pg_namespace n ON n.oid = c.relnamespace
WHERE c.relname ~ '^(oldtable)$'
  AND pg_catalog.pg_table_is_visible(c.oid)
ORDER BY 2, 3;

SELECT a.attname,
  pg_catalog.format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod),
  (SELECT substring(pg_catalog.pg_get_expr(d.adbin, d.adrelid) for 128)
   FROM pg_catalog.pg_attrdef d
   WHERE d.adrelid = a.attrelid AND d.adnum = a.attnum AND a.atthasdef),
  a.attnotnull, a.attnum
FROM pg_catalog.pg_attribute a
WHERE a.attrelid = '74359' AND a.attnum > 0 AND NOT a.attisdropped
ORDER BY a.attnum;

Replace that 74359 above with the oid you get from the previous query.