Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 12:00:25 -0700
From: Michael Fuhr <mike@fuhr.org>
To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?K=D6PFERL?= Robert <robert.koepferl@sonorys.at>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: returning a record from PL/pgSQL
Message-ID: <20050123190024.GA18329@winnie.fuhr.org>
References: <ED4E30DD9C43D5118DFB00508BBBA76EB1657C@neptun.sonorys.at>
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On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 12:41:09PM +0100, KÖPFERL Robert wrote:
>
> I just tried hard to return
> a single record fromout a plpgsql-function. While the (otherwise excelent)
> documentation didn't give me an answer, I found out that this works:
> 
>         select into ret false, balance, balance;
>         return ret;
> 
> while ret is a composite type.
>
> This construction however tastes not good to me. Is there a nicer way?

In the "Declarations" section of the PL/pgSQL documentation, under
"Row Types," is the following:

    The individual fields of the row value are accessed using the
    usual dot notation, for example rowvar.field.

and under "RETURN" in the "Control Structures" section is this:

    To return a composite (row) value, you must write a record or
    row variable as the expression.

So you could to the following:

    ret.field1 := value1;
    ret.field2 := value2;
    ret.field3 := value3;
    RETURN ret;

Internally, however, each expression in the above assignments would
be evaluated using a SELECT statement, so whether this code is
"nicer" than what you wrote depends on what you mean by "nice."

-- 
Michael Fuhr
http://www.fuhr.org/~mfuhr/