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From: Leif Biberg Kristensen <leif@solumslekt.org>
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Using Postgresql as application server
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:24:30 +0200
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On Monday 15. August 2011 16.36.23 Merlin Moncure wrote:
> Postgres is not just a database -- it's a language hosting platform if
> you want to use it as such.  Now, you can continue to do things as
> you've always done (database 'here', code 'here', web server 'here'),
> but why discourage people from trying out different things?

Somebody's probably going to do it -- for no other reason why than because you 
can.

Sometimes I'll write functions like

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION dpp(INTEGER) RETURNS SETOF TEXT AS $$
    SELECT '<p class="packed">' || ss_link_expand(source_text) || '</p>'
    FROM sources
    WHERE parent_id=$1
    ORDER BY sort_order
$$ LANGUAGE SQL STABLE;

for dumping thext that I'll copy and paste right into a static Web page. It's 
a lot easier to do this in psql than a lot of other methods that I can think 
of.

BTW, the mentioned ss_link_expand() function will generate hyperlinks on the 
fly from a compact format stored in the database. The concept is explained 
here: <http://solumslekt.org/blog/?p=151>

I'm working with Postgres and PHP in tandem, and frequently write functions in 
sql or pl/pgsql that will output text directly in HTML format, mostly because 
I've found text transformation (particularly regexp_replace) in Postgres to be 
far superior to the equivalent methods of doing it in PHP.

Leif