Re: Adding comments to help understand psql hidden queries

On Thu, Feb 1, 2024 at 4:34 PM Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> The use of the --echo-hidden flag in psql is used to show people the way psql performs its magic for its backslash commands. None of them has more magic than "\d relation", but it suffers from needing a lot of separate queries to gather all of the information it needs. Unfortunately, those queries can get overwhelming and hard to figure out which one does what, especially for those not already very familiar with the system catalogs. Attached is a patch to add a small SQL comment to the top of each SELECT query inside describeOneTableDetail. All other functions use a single query, and thus need no additional context. But "\d mytable" has the potential to run over a dozen SQL queries! The new format looks like this:
>
> /******** QUERY *********/
> /* Get information about row-level policies */
> SELECT pol.polname, pol.polpermissive,
> CASE WHEN pol.polroles = '{0}' THEN NULL ELSE pg_catalog.array_to_string(array(select rolname from pg_catalog.pg_roles where oid = any (pol.polroles) order by 1),',') END,
> pg_catalog.pg_get_expr(pol.polqual, pol.polrelid),
> pg_catalog.pg_get_expr(pol.polwithcheck, pol.polrelid),
> CASE pol.polcmd
> WHEN 'r' THEN 'SELECT'
> WHEN 'a' THEN 'INSERT'
> WHEN 'w' THEN 'UPDATE'
> WHEN 'd' THEN 'DELETE'
> END AS cmd
> FROM pg_catalog.pg_policy pol
> WHERE pol.polrelid = '134384' ORDER BY 1;
> /************************/
>
> Cheers,
> Greg

Thanks, this looks like some helpful information. In the same vein,
I'm including a patch which adds information about the command that
generates the given query as well (atop your commit). This will
modify the query line to include the command itself:

/******** QUERY (\dRs) *********/

Best,

David