This section describes PostgreSQL's functions for operating on sequence objects. Sequence objects (also called sequence generators or just sequences) are special single-row tables created with CREATE SEQUENCE. A sequence object is usually used to generate unique identifiers for rows of a table. The sequence functions, listed in Table 6-26, provide simple, multiuser-safe methods for obtaining successive sequence values from sequence objects.
Table 6-26. Sequence Functions
| Function | Returns | Description |
|---|---|---|
nextval(text) |
bigint | Advance sequence and return new value |
currval(text) |
bigint | Return value most recently obtained with nextval |
setval(text,bigint) |
bigint | Set sequence's current value |
setval(text,bigint,boolean) |
bigint | Set sequence's current value and is_called flag |
For largely historical reasons, the sequence to be operated on by a sequence-function call is specified by a text-string argument. To achieve some compatibility with the handling of ordinary SQL names, the sequence functions convert their argument to lower case unless the string is double-quoted. Thus
nextval('foo') operates on sequence foo
nextval('FOO') operates on sequence foo
nextval('"Foo"') operates on sequence Foo
The sequence name can be schema-qualified if necessary:
nextval('myschema.foo') operates on myschema.foo
nextval('"myschema".foo') same as above
nextval('foo') searches search path for foo
Of course, the text argument can be the result of an expression, not only a simple literal, which is occasionally useful.
The available sequence functions are:
nextvalAdvance the sequence object to its next value and return
that value. This is done atomically: even if multiple
sessions execute nextval
concurrently, each will safely receive a distinct sequence
value.
currvalReturn the value most recently obtained by nextval for this sequence in the current
session. (An error is reported if nextval has never been called for this
sequence in this session.) Notice that because this is
returning a session-local value, it gives a predictable
answer even if other sessions are executing nextval meanwhile.
setvalReset the sequence object's counter value. The
two-parameter form sets the sequence's last_value field to the specified value and
sets its is_called field to
true, meaning that the next
nextval will advance the
sequence before returning a value. In the three-parameter
form, is_called may be set either
true or false. If it's set to false, the next nextval will return exactly the specified
value, and sequence advancement commences with the
following nextval. For
example,
SELECT setval('foo', 42); Next nextval() will return 43
SELECT setval('foo', 42, true); Same as above
SELECT setval('foo', 42, false); Next nextval() will return 42
The result returned by setval is just the value of its second
argument.
Important: To avoid blocking of concurrent transactions that obtain numbers from the same sequence, a
nextvaloperation is never rolled back; that is, once a value has been fetched it is considered used, even if the transaction that did thenextvallater aborts. This means that aborted transactions may leave unused "holes" in the sequence of assigned values.setvaloperations are never rolled back, either.
If a sequence object has been created with default parameters,
nextval() calls on it will return
successive values beginning with one. Other behaviors can be
obtained by using special parameters in the CREATE SEQUENCE command; see its command reference
page for more information.