Re: UPDATE query with variable number of OR conditions in WHERE

Ben Morrow <ben(at)morrow(dot)me(dot)uk> writes:
> Quoth jorgemal1960(at)gmail(dot)com (JORGE MALDONADO):
>> I am building an UPDATE query at run-time and one of the fields I want to
>> include in the WHERE condition may repeat several times, I do not know how
>> many.
>>
>> UPDATE table1
>> SET field1 = "some value"
>> WHERE (field2 = value_1 OR field2 = value_2 OR .....OR field2 = value_n)
>>
>> I build such a query using a programming language and, after that, I
>> execute it. Is this a good approach to build such a query?

> You can use IN for this:

> UPDATE table1
> SET field1 = "some value"
> WHERE field2 IN (value_1, value_2, ...);

IN is definitely better style than a long chain of ORs. Another
possibility is to use = ANY(ARRAY):

UPDATE table1
SET field1 = "some value"
WHERE field2 = ANY (ARRAY[value_1, value_2, ...]);

This is not better than IN as-is (in particular, IN is SQL-standard and
this is not), but it opens the door to treating the array of values as a
single parameter:

UPDATE table1
SET field1 = "some value"
WHERE field2 = ANY ($1::int[]);

(or text[], etc). Now you can build the array client-side and not need
a new statement for each different number of comparison values. If
you're not into prepared statements, this may not excite you, but some
people find it to be a big deal.

regards, tom lane