Given a PostgreSQL table named requests
with a column named status
and a constraint like this:
ALTER TABLE requests ADD CONSTRAINT allowed_status_types
CHECK (status IN (
'pending', -- request has not been attempted
'success', -- request succeeded
'failure' -- request failed
));
In psql
I can pull up information about this constraint like this:
example-database=# \d requests
Table "public.example-database"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------------------+-----------------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------
id | integer | not null default nextval('requests_id_seq'::regclass)
status | character varying | not null default 'pending'::character varying
created_at | timestamp without time zone | not null
updated_at | timestamp without time zone | not null
Indexes:
"requests_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
Check constraints:
"allowed_status_types" CHECK (status::text = ANY (ARRAY['pending'::character varying, 'success'::character varying, 'failure'::character varying]::text[]))
But is it possible to write a query that specifically returns the allowed_status_types
of pending, success, failure?
It would be great to be able to memoize the results of this query within my application, vs. having to maintain a duplicate copy.
You can query the system catalog pg_constraint
, e.g.:
select consrc
from pg_constraint
where conrelid = 'requests'::regclass
and consrc like '(status%';
consrc
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(status = ANY (ARRAY['pending'::text, 'success'::text, 'failure'::text]))
(1 row)
Use the following function to unpack the string:
create or replace function get_check_values(str text)
returns setof text language plpgsql as $$
begin
return query
execute format (
'select * from unnest(%s)',
regexp_replace(str, '.*(ARRAY\[.*\]).*', '\1'));
end $$;
select get_check_values(consrc)
from pg_constraint
where conrelid = 'requests'::regclass
and consrc like '(status%';
get_check_values
------------------
pending
success
failure
(3 rows)