How to use SELECT in PostgreSQL script without displaying output?

Question

I have a SQL script that sets up a database. One of the operations is creating a PostGIS geometry column:

...
SELECT AddGeometryColumn('table', 'column', 4326, 'POINT', 2);
...

However, this results in the following output:

               addgeometrycolumn                
------------------------------------------------
 public.table.column SRID:4326 TYPE:POINT DIMS:2

This clutters the output of the rest of the operations I'm doing. How can I supress this output?

klin · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-19 01:13:17Z

2

You can call the function in FROM clause and add WHERE with a false condition, e.g.:

select res
from AddGeometryColumn('table', 'column', 4326, 'POINT', 2) res
where res isnull;

The function will be executed, the query returning no rows.

You can also try an anonymous code block:

do $$ begin 
perform AddGeometryColumn('table', 'column', 4326, 'POINT', 2); 
end $$;

answered Jan 18, 2016 at 23:41

klin

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Comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:52:05Z

2

In PostgreSQL 9.4 and above, you can simply do the following.

SELECT 
WHERE EXISTS (AddGeometryColumn('table', 'column', 4326, 'POINT', 2));

Interestingly, the manual says that SELECT without an output column is perfectly legal!

CommunityBot

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answered Jan 19, 2016 at 1:25

Robins Tharakan

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