operators

Postgres Operators with pgrx

pgrx makes defining custom operators for your custom types very simple. You can either manually use the #[pg_operator] macro on a function for likely non-standard operators, or you can use one or more of the the derive macros #[derive(PostgresEq, PostgresOrd, PostgresHash)] if your type is otherwise capable of implementing the equivalent Rust traits. In that case, pgrx will generate all the standard equality/comparison SQL (and Rust) functions for you.

Manual Operator Defines

The #[pg_operator] macro is used to manually declare a function as a Postgres operator.

Operator functions take one or two arguments and return a non-void value. The argument types and return types do not necessarily need to be identical.

If, for example, you have a type, such as:

#[derive(PostgresType, Serialize, Desearialize)]
struct MyType(String);

We can create a "concatenate" operator like so:

#[pg_operator(immutable, parallel_safe)]
#[opname(||)]
fn mytype_concact(mut left: MyType, right: MyType) -> MyType {
    left.0.push_str(&right.0);
    left
}

And now, it'll be usable via SQL as:

# SELECT '"hello "' || '"world"';
 ?column? 
----------
 "hello world"
(1 row)

note that #[derive(PostgresType, Serialize, Deserialize)] uses JSON as the textual representation of a type

You'll notice that we used #[pg_operator(immutable, parallel_safe)]. If those properties are true for your function, you should specify them. The defaults are volatile, parallel_unsafe.

The #[opname(||)] macro specifies the actual SQL operator name.

The complete set of attributes that can be used with #[pg_operator], which correspond to Postgres' CREATE OPERATOR statement are:

/* required */
#[opname( <operator symbol name> )]

/* these are optional */
#[negator( <operator symbol name> )]
#[restrict( <function name to use for restrict operator option> )]
#[join( <function name to use for join operator option>)]
#[merges]   // is this operator used for merges of this type?
#[hashes]   // is this operator used for hashes of this type?

Automatically Deriving Operators and Families

pgrx also provides three derive macros for automatically implementing the standard Postgres equality, comparison, and hash operators/functions, along with their OPERATOR CLASS and OPERATOR FAMILY definitions. Using these derive macros will generate the necessary SQL to ensure your type can be used in btree and hash indexes.

#[derive(PostgresEq)]

This derive macro requires that your type also implement Rust's Eq and PartialEq traits, either through #[derive] or manually.

pgrx will then generate #[pg_operator(immutable, parallel_safe))]-tagged functions for the equals (=) and not equals (<>) operators, properly setting their #[negator] attributes.

#[derive(PostgresOrd)]

This derive macro requires that your type also implement Rust's Ord and PartialOrd traits, either through #[derive] or manually.

pgrx will then generate #[pg_operator(immutable, parallel_safe)]-tagged functions for the following operators:

• <
• >
• <=
• >=
• a "compare" function named <typename>_cmp()

For the generated operators, their #[negator] and #[commutator] attributes are properly set.

When a type derives both PostgresEq and PostgresOrd, then pgrx also generates the necessary DDL to define an OPERATOR CLASS and OPERATOR FAMILY for the type and set of operators. This allows the type to be used with btree indexes.

#[derive(PostgresHash)]

This derive macro requires that your type also implement Rust's Hash trait, either through #[derive] or manually.

pgrx uses a hasher (seahash) that's guaranteed to be stable. This is important as Postgres may store a value's hash in a USING hash index.

pgrx will then generate a #[pg_extern(immutable, parallel_safe)] function named <typename>_hash().

It will also generate an OPERATOR CLASS and OPERATOR FAMILY for Postgres hash indexes.