CREATE DOMAIN
CREATE DOMAIN
CREATE DOMAIN - define a new domain
Synopsis
CREATE DOMAINname
[ AS ]data_type
[ COLLATEcollation
] [ DEFAULTexpression
] [constraint
[ ... ] ] whereconstraint
is: [ CONSTRAINTconstraint_name
] { NOT NULL | NULL | CHECK (expression
) }
Description
CREATE DOMAIN
creates a new domain. A domain is
essentially a data type with optional constraints (restrictions on
the allowed set of values).
The user who defines a domain becomes its owner.
If a schema name is given (for example,
CREATE DOMAIN
myschema.mydomain ...
) then the domain is created in the
specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema.
The domain name must be unique among the types and domains existing
in its schema.
Domains are useful for abstracting common constraints on fields into a single location for maintenance. For example, several tables might contain email address columns, all requiring the same CHECK constraint to verify the address syntax. Define a domain rather than setting up each table's constraint individually.
To be able to create a domain, you must have
USAGE
privilege on the underlying type.
Parameters
-
name
-
The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a domain to be created.
-
data_type
-
The underlying data type of the domain. This can include array specifiers.
-
collation
-
An optional collation for the domain. If no collation is specified, the domain has the same collation behavior as its underlying data type. The underlying type must be collatable if
COLLATE
is specified. -
DEFAULT
expression
-
The
DEFAULT
clause specifies a default value for columns of the domain data type. The value is any variable-free expression (but subqueries are not allowed). The data type of the default expression must match the data type of the domain. If no default value is specified, then the default value is the null value.The default expression will be used in any insert operation that does not specify a value for the column. If a default value is defined for a particular column, it overrides any default associated with the domain. In turn, the domain default overrides any default value associated with the underlying data type.
-
CONSTRAINT
constraint_name
-
An optional name for a constraint. If not specified, the system generates a name.
-
NOT NULL
-
Values of this domain are prevented from being null (but see notes below).
-
NULL
-
Values of this domain are allowed to be null. This is the default.
This clause is only intended for compatibility with nonstandard SQL databases. Its use is discouraged in new applications.
-
CHECK (
expression
) -
CHECK
clauses specify integrity constraints or tests which values of the domain must satisfy. Each constraint must be an expression producing a Boolean result. It should use the key wordVALUE
to refer to the value being tested. Expressions evaluating to TRUE or UNKNOWN succeed. If the expression produces a FALSE result, an error is reported and the value is not allowed to be converted to the domain type.Currently,
CHECK
expressions cannot contain subqueries nor refer to variables other thanVALUE
.When a domain has multiple
CHECK
constraints, they will be tested in alphabetical order by name. ( PostgreSQL versions before 9.5 did not honor any particular firing order forCHECK
constraints.)
Notes
Domain constraints, particularly
NOT NULL
, are checked when
converting a value to the domain type. It is possible for a column that
is nominally of the domain type to read as null despite there being such
a constraint. For example, this can happen in an outer-join query, if
the domain column is on the nullable side of the outer join. A more
subtle example is
INSERT INTO tab (domcol) VALUES ((SELECT domcol FROM tab WHERE false));
The empty scalar sub-SELECT will produce a null value that is considered to be of the domain type, so no further constraint checking is applied to it, and the insertion will succeed.
It is very difficult to avoid such problems, because of SQL's general
assumption that a null value is a valid value of every data type. Best practice
therefore is to design a domain's constraints so that a null value is allowed,
and then to apply column
NOT NULL
constraints to columns of
the domain type as needed, rather than directly to the domain type.
PostgreSQL
assumes that
CHECK
constraints' conditions are immutable, that is,
they will always give the same result for the same input value. This
assumption is what justifies examining
CHECK
constraints only when a value is first converted to be of a domain type,
and not at other times. (This is essentially the same as the treatment
of table
CHECK
constraints, as described in
Section 5.4.1
.)
An example of a common way to break this assumption is to reference a
user-defined function in a
CHECK
expression, and then
change the behavior of that
function.
PostgreSQL
does not disallow that,
but it will not notice if there are stored values of the domain type that
now violate the
CHECK
constraint. That would cause a
subsequent database dump and restore to fail. The recommended way to
handle such a change is to drop the constraint (using
ALTER
DOMAIN
), adjust the function definition, and re-add the
constraint, thereby rechecking it against stored data.
Examples
This example creates the
us_postal_code
data type and
then uses the type in a table definition. A regular expression test
is used to verify that the value looks like a valid US postal code:
CREATE DOMAIN us_postal_code AS TEXT CHECK( VALUE ~ '^\d{5}$' OR VALUE ~ '^\d{5}-\d{4}$' ); CREATE TABLE us_snail_addy ( address_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY, street1 TEXT NOT NULL, street2 TEXT, street3 TEXT, city TEXT NOT NULL, postal us_postal_code NOT NULL );
Compatibility
The command
CREATE DOMAIN
conforms to the SQL
standard.