PL/Perl Perl PL/Perl is a loadable procedural language that enables you to write PostgreSQL functions in the Perl programming language. To install PL/Perl in a particular database, use createlang plperl dbname. If a language is installed into template1, all subsequently created databases will have the language installed automatically. Users of source packages must specially enable the build of PL/Perl during the installation process. (Refer to for more information.) Users of binary packages might find PL/Perl in a separate subpackage. To create a function in the PL/Perl language, use the standard syntax: CREATE FUNCTION funcname (argument-types) RETURNS return-type AS $$ # PL/Perl function body $$ LANGUAGE plperl; The body of the function is ordinary Perl code. The syntax of the CREATE FUNCTION command requires the function body to be written as a string constant. It is usually most convenient to use dollar quoting (see ) for the string constant. If you choose to use regular single-quoted string constant syntax, you must escape single quote marks (') and backslashes (\) used in the body of the function, typically by doubling them (see ). Arguments and results are handled as in any other Perl subroutine: arguments are passed in @_, and a result value is returned with return or as the last expression evaluated in the function. For example, a function returning the greater of two integer values could be defined as: CREATE FUNCTION perl_max (integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$ if ($_[0] > $_[1]) { return $_[0]; } return $_[1]; $$ LANGUAGE plperl; If an SQL null valuenull valuein PL/Perl is passed to a function, the argument value will appear as undefined in Perl. The above function definition will not behave very nicely with null inputs (in fact, it will act as though they are zeroes). We could add STRICT to the function definition to make PostgreSQL do something more reasonable: if a null value is passed, the function will not be called at all, but will just return a null result automatically. Alternatively, we could check for undefined inputs in the function body. For example, suppose that we wanted perl_max with one null and one nonnull argument to return the nonnull argument, rather than a null value: CREATE FUNCTION perl_max (integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$ my ($a,$b) = @_; if (! defined $a) { if (! defined $b) { return undef; } return $b; } if (! defined $b) { return $a; } if ($a > $b) { return $a; } return $b; $$ LANGUAGE plperl; As shown above, to return an SQL null value from a PL/Perl function, return an undefined value. This can be done whether the function is strict or not. Composite-type arguments are passed to the function as references to hashes. The keys of the hash are the attribute names of the composite type. Here is an example: CREATE TABLE employee ( name text, basesalary integer, bonus integer ); CREATE FUNCTION empcomp(employee) RETURNS integer AS $$ my ($emp) = @_; return $emp->{basesalary} + $emp->{bonus}; $$ LANGUAGE plperl; SELECT name, empcomp(employee) FROM employee; Access to the database itself from your Perl function can be done via the function spi_exec_query described below, or via an experimental module DBD::PgSPI (also available at CPAN mirror sites). This module makes available a DBI-compliant database-handle named $pg_dbh that can be used to perform queries with normal DBI syntax.DBI PL/Perl itself presently provides two additional Perl commands: spi_exec_query in PL/Perl spi_exec_query(query [, max-rows]) spi_exec_query(command) Executes an SQL command. Here is an example of a query (SELECT command) with the optional maximum number of rows: $rv = spi_exec_query('SELECT * FROM my_table', 5); This returns up to 5 rows from the table my_table. If my_table has a column my_column, you can get that value from row $i of the result like this: $foo = $rv->{rows}[$i]->{my_column}; The total number of rows returned from a SELECT query can be accessed like this: $nrows = $rv->{processed} Here is an example using a different command type: $query = "INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (1, 'test')"; $rv = spi_exec_query($query); You can then access the command status (e.g., SPI_OK_INSERT) like this: $res = $rv->{status}; To get the number of rows affected, do: $nrows = $rv->{processed}; elog in PL/Perl elog(level, msg) Emit a log or error message. Possible levels are DEBUG, LOG, INFO, NOTICE, WARNING, and ERROR. ERROR raises an error condition; if this is not trapped by the surrounding Perl code, the error propagates out to the calling query, causing the current transaction or subtransaction to be aborted. This is effectively the same as the Perl die command. The other levels simply report the message to the system log and/or client. The argument values supplied to a PL/Perl function's code are simply the input arguments converted to text form (just as if they had been displayed by a SELECT statement). Conversely, the return command will accept any string that is acceptable input format for the function's declared return type. So, the PL/Perl programmer can manipulate data values as if they were just text. PL/Perl can also return row sets and composite types, and row sets of composite types. Here is an example of a PL/Perl function returning a row set of a row type. Note that a composite type is always represented as a hash reference. CREATE TABLE test ( i int, v varchar ); INSERT INTO test (i, v) VALUES (1, 'first line'); INSERT INTO test (i, v) VALUES (2, 'second line'); INSERT INTO test (i, v) VALUES (3, 'third line'); INSERT INTO test (i, v) VALUES (4, 'immortal'); CREATE FUNCTION test_munge() RETURNS SETOF test AS $$ my $res = []; my $rv = spi_exec_query('select i, v from test;'); my $status = $rv->{status}; my $nrows = $rv->{processed}; foreach my $rn (0 .. $nrows - 1) { my $row = $rv->{rows}[$rn]; $row->{i} += 200 if defined($row->{i}); $row->{v} =~ tr/A-Za-z/a-zA-Z/ if (defined($row->{v})); push @$res, $row; } return $res; $$ LANGUAGE plperl; SELECT * FROM test_munge(); Here is an example of a PL/Perl function returning a composite type: CREATE TYPE testrowperl AS (f1 integer, f2 text, f3 text); CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION perl_row() RETURNS testrowperl AS $$ return {f2 => 'hello', f1 => 1, f3 => 'world'}; $$ LANGUAGE plperl; Here is an example of a PL/Perl function returning a row set of a composite type. Since a row set is always a reference to an array and a composite type is always a reference to a hash, a rowset of a composite type is a reference to an array of hash references. CREATE TYPE testsetperl AS (f1 integer, f2 text, f3 text); CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION perl_set() RETURNS SETOF testsetperl AS $$ return [ { f1 => 1, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'World' }, { f1 => 2, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'PostgreSQL' }, { f1 => 3, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'PL/Perl' } ]; $$ LANGUAGE plperl; You can use the global hash %_SHARED to store data between function calls. For example: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION set_var(name text, val text) RETURNS text AS $$ if ($_SHARED{$_[0]} = $_[1]) { return 'ok'; } else { return "can't set shared variable $_[0] to $_[1]"; } $$ LANGUAGE plperl; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION get_var(name text) RETURNS text AS $$ return $_SHARED{$_[0]}; $$ LANGUAGE plperl; SELECT set_var('sample', 'Hello, PL/Perl! How's tricks?'); SELECT get_var('sample'); trusted PL/Perl Normally, PL/Perl is installed as a trusted programming language named plperl. In this setup, certain Perl operations are disabled to preserve security. In general, the operations that are restricted are those that interact with the environment. This includes file handle operations, require, and use (for external modules). There is no way to access internals of the database server process or to gain OS-level access with the permissions of the server process, as a C function can do. Thus, any unprivileged database user may be permitted to use this language. Here is an example of a function that will not work because file system operations are not allowed for security reasons: CREATE FUNCTION badfunc() RETURNS integer AS $$ open(TEMP, ">/tmp/badfile"); print TEMP "Gotcha!\n"; return 1; $$ LANGUAGE plperl; The creation of the function will succeed, but executing it will not. Sometimes it is desirable to write Perl functions that are not restricted. For example, one might want a Perl function that sends mail. To handle these cases, PL/Perl can also be installed as an untrusted language (usually called PL/PerlUPL/PerlU). In this case the full Perl language is available. If the createlang program is used to install the language, the language name plperlu will select the untrusted PL/Perl variant. The writer of a PL/PerlU function must take care that the function cannot be used to do anything unwanted, since it will be able to do anything that could be done by a user logged in as the database administrator. Note that the database system allows only database superusers to create functions in untrusted languages. If the above function was created by a superuser using the language plperlu, execution would succeed. PL/Perl can be used to write trigger functions. In a trigger function, the hash reference $_TD contains information about the current trigger event. The fields of the $_TD hash reference are: $_TD->{new}{foo} NEW value of column foo $_TD->{old}{foo} OLD value of column foo $_TD{name} Name of the trigger being called $_TD{event} Trigger event: INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or UNKNOWN $_TD{when} When the trigger was called: BEFORE, AFTER, or UNKNOWN $_TD{level} The trigger level: ROW, STATEMENT, or UNKNOWN $_TD{relid} OID of the table on which the trigger fired $_TD{relname} Name of the table on which the trigger fired @{$_TD{argv}} Arguments of the trigger function $_TD{argc} Number of arguments of the trigger function Triggers can return one of the following: return; Execute the statement "SKIP" Don't execute the statement "MODIFY" Indicates that the NEW row was modified by the trigger function Here is an example of a trigger function, illustrating some of the above: CREATE TABLE test ( i int, v varchar ); CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION valid_id() RETURNS trigger AS $$ if (($_TD->{new}{i} >= 100) || ($_TD->{new}{i} <= 0)) { return "SKIP"; # skip INSERT/UPDATE command } elsif ($_TD->{new}{v} ne "immortal") { $_TD->{new}{v} .= "(modified by trigger)"; return "MODIFY"; # modify row and execute INSERT/UPDATE command } else { return; # execute INSERT/UPDATE command } $$ LANGUAGE plperl; CREATE TRIGGER test_valid_id_trig BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON test FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE valid_id(); The following features are currently missing from PL/Perl, but they would make welcome contributions. PL/Perl functions cannot call each other directly (because they are anonymous subroutines inside Perl). SPI is not yet fully implemented. In the current implementation, if you are fetching or returning very large data sets, you should be aware that these will all go into memory. Future features will help with this. In the meantime, we suggest that you not use PL/Perl if you will fetch or return very large result sets.