Re: A table of magic constants

Hello Adrian,

Thank you for the additional reference links but my concern was less about
how to find out what a function (formerly magic constant) that I
encountered in the wild did but more about having a list that would educate
newcomers/me about what is automatically available for use. For example, in
the RLS example from my original message, had I the same or similar need as
the poster I would not have been able to formulate the policy that I quoted
because I had no clue that SESSION_USER even existed. Specifically I would
not have been able to formulate the following clause, "... WITH CHECK
(username = SESSION_USER)", w/o first knowing that SESSION_USER was a thing.

​Regards,​

Dane

On Sat, Jul 11, 2015 at 3:54 PM, Adrian Klaver <adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com>
wrote:

> On 07/11/2015 12:21 PM, Raymond O'Donnell wrote:
>
>> On 11/07/2015 20:07, Dane Foster wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> As a recent convert to the Church of Postgres I've been consuming vast
>>>
>>
>> Welcome to the One True Faith! :-)
>>
>> amounts of information on PostgreSQL, and SESSION_USER is not the first
>>> nor only, what I'm calling magic constant, that I've seen. Off the top
>>> of my head, other examples that I've encountered are CURRENT_USER and
>>> CURRENT_TIMESTAMP.
>>>
>>> So my question is this, is there a reference table in the documentation
>>> that I haven't found yet that lists all magic constants and their
>>> meaning? And if not in the official documentation is it in the wiki?
>>>
>>
>> session_user, current_timestamp and current_user are all functions, not
>> magic constants:
>>
>> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/functions-datetime.html
>> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/functions-info.html
>>
>> I hope this helps,
>>
>
> To add to this. In the documentation section:
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/interactive/index.html
>
> there is a Search box where you can enter the word/phrase you are looking
> for.
>
> If all else fails there is the Index:
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/interactive/index.html
>
>
>
>> Ray.
>>
>>
>
> --
> Adrian Klaver
> adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com
>