HOWTO: Get a table or database definition

I guess it would be great if Pgsql had a way to find a database
definition via a system stored procedure like other database platforms
have.

There are two ways I've found so far:

SELECT
attname as "name", typname as "type", atttypmod - 4 as "size",
relhaspkey as "is_primary_key", *
FROM
pg_class AS a
LEFT OUTER JOIN pg_attribute AS b ON (b.attrelid = a.oid)
LEFT OUTER JOIN pg_type AS c ON (b.atttypid = c.oid)
where a.relname = 'names' and b.attstattarget = -1
order by attnum;

...yields great results for a table called 'names'

The other way is:

pg_dump -h localhost -p 5432 -U root -s -C test | grep -i "CREATE" -A
500000 | grep -v "\-\-" | grep -v "\\connect" | grep -v "SET " | tr -s
"\n"

...shows me a result for host 'localhost', port '5432', user 'root',
database 'test'