My table has two columns:
startsAt
endsAt
Both hold date and time. I want to make following constraint:
IF both columns are NOT NULL then range between startsAt and endsAt must not overlap with other ranges (from other rows).
You can keep your separate timestamp
columns and still use an exclusion constraint on an expression:
CREATE TABLE tbl (
tbl_id serial PRIMARY KEY
, starts_at timestamp
, ends_at timestamp
, EXCLUDE USING gist (tsrange(starts_at, ends_at) WITH &&) -- no overlap
);
Constructing a tsrange
value without explicit bounds as tsrange(starts_at, ends_at)
assumes default bounds: inclusive lower and exclusive upper - '[)'
, which is typically best.
Related:
ALTER TABLE tbl ADD CONSTRAINT tbl_no_overlapping_time_ranges
EXCLUDE USING gist (tsrange(starts_at, ends_at) WITH &&)
Syntax details are the same as for CREATE TABLE
.