How to rename the same column name in dozens of tables in Postgres?

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Stefan Schwarzer <stefan.schwarzer@unep.org

wrote:

Hi there,

I have dozens of tables where I need to rename one column in each of
these. Is there any generic way to do that?

I am not really familiar with the scripting possibilities of Postgres.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Stefan

You can do with script. I made one on fly for this, other's might have more
polished version.

-bash-4.1$ more rename.sh
#!/bin/bash
OLDCOLUMN=aa
NEWCOLUMN=a
for i in $(psql -t -c "select table_schema||'.'||table_name from
information_schema.tables where table_schema='public';")
do
/opt/PostgreSQL/9.3/bin/psql -p 5432 -U postgres -c "alter table $i
rename column $OLDCOLUMN to $NEWCOLUMN;"
done

Replace the port,user,OLDCOLUMN, NEWCOLUMN and SCHEMA according to your
requirement.

---
Regards,
Raghavendra
EnterpriseDB Corporation
Blog: http://raghavt.blogspot.com/

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Raghavendra <
raghavendra.rao@enterprisedb.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Stefan Schwarzer <
stefan.schwarzer@unep.org> wrote:

Hi there,

I have dozens of tables where I need to rename one column in each of
these. Is there any generic way to do that?

I am not really familiar with the scripting possibilities of Postgres.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Stefan

You can do with script. I made one on fly for this, other's might have
more polished version.

-bash-4.1$ more rename.sh
#!/bin/bash
OLDCOLUMN=aa
NEWCOLUMN=a
for i in $(psql -t -c "select table_schema||'.'||table_name from
information_schema.tables where table_schema='public';")
do
/opt/PostgreSQL/9.3/bin/psql -p 5432 -U postgres -c "alter table $i
rename column $OLDCOLUMN to $NEWCOLUMN;"
done

Replace the port,user,OLDCOLUMN, NEWCOLUMN and SCHEMA according to your
requirement.

One more way from command line

-bash-4.1$ OLDCOLUMN=xyz
-bash-4.1$ NEWCOLUMN=abc
-bash-4.1$ psql -c "select 'alter table '||table_schema||'.'||table_name||'
rename column
$OLDCOLUMN
to
$NEWCOLUMN
;' from information_schema.tables where table_schema='public';" | psql

--Raghav

Hi there,

I have dozens of tables where I need to rename one column in each of these. Is there any generic way to do that?
I am not really familiar with the scripting possibilities of Postgres.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Stefan

You can do with script. I made one on fly for this, other's might have more polished version.

-bash-4.1$ more rename.sh
#!/bin/bash
OLDCOLUMN=aa
NEWCOLUMN=a
for i in $(psql -t -c "select table_schema||'.'||table_name from information_schema.tables where table_schema='public';")
do
/opt/PostgreSQL/9.3/bin/psql -p 5432 -U postgres -c "alter table $i rename column $OLDCOLUMN to $NEWCOLUMN;"
done

Replace the port,user,OLDCOLUMN, NEWCOLUMN and SCHEMA according to your requirement.

One more way from command line

-bash-4.1$ OLDCOLUMN=xyz
-bash-4.1$ NEWCOLUMN=abc
-bash-4.1$ psql -c "select 'alter table '||table_schema||'.'||table_name||' rename column $OLDCOLUMN to $NEWCOLUMN;' from information_schema.tables where table_schema='public';" | psql

Thanks so much. I had to add the database user and database name:

psql -U XXX -c "select 'alter table '||table_schema||'.'||table_name||' rename column $OLDCOLUMN to $NEWCOLUMN;' from information_schema.tables where table_schema='gis';" my_database | psql -U XXX my_database

and still run in an error. But it renamed quite a bunch of the tables. So, very good!

Stef