Inserting rows in PostgreSQL db from Go lang project

Introduction

In the previous post Connecting to PostgreSQL from Go lang project, we learned how to connect to the PostgreSQL database from Go lang project using database/sql package that ships with Go, along with github.com/lib/pq Postgres driver. In this post, we’ll learn how to insert data (rows) in a PostgreSQL table.

Prerequisites

To be able to achieve our objective i.e. Inserting rows to PostgreSQL from Go , there are some prerequisites. Sticking to the core subject of this blog, I won’t cover them, however, I’m providing with useful references:

• • Install PostgreSQL, setup an instance and create a test database – https://www.postgresqltutorial.com/install-postgresql/

• • Install Go and configure workspace – https://www.callicoder.com/golang-installation-setup-gopath-workspace/

For purpose of this tutorial, I’m using Postgres 11 and Go 1.13.xx

Objective – Inserting rows to a PostgreSQL table from Go

In following steps, I’ll demonstrate how to write a simple command-line tool (CLI) using Go lang to insert rows in PostgreSQL database table

Step 1. SQL Table definition

Create test table EMP in PostgreSQL test database with the following columns

-- create a sample table EMP
CREATE TABLE emp (  
  empno SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,  
  ename TEXT,
  sal INT,
  email TEXT UNIQUE NOT NULL 
);

Step 2. SQL Insert statement

a basic SQL INSERT statement will look something like this

INSERT INTO public.emp (ename, sal, email)
VALUES('Smith', 800, 'smith@acme.com');

Step 3. Connecting to PostgreSQL instance

To be able to insert a row in the database, we first need to connect to the instance. In earlier post in this series we learned how to connect to PostgreSQL from Go lang project using database/sql package. I was originally using the same connection string, when one of the readers suggested me a better approach i.e. to use const() construct for declaring connection string variable

const (
	host = "localhost"
	port = 5432
	user = "postgres"
	password = "secure-password"
	dbname = "connect-db"
)

Next in our main() function we are going to create a string variable connStr which contains all of the information required to connect to our Postgres database.

func main() {
	// connection string
	connStr := fmt.Sprintf("host=%s port=%d user=%s "+
	"password=%s dbname=%s sslmode=disable",
	host, port, user, password, dbname)
}

Step 4. Preparing Go lang code to insert row in EMP table

In our Go code, we’ll use same SQL statement and calling db.Exec() method on sql.db object. A thing to note is here is db.Exec() returns two values – a result and an error. We’re using the later for error handling, to generate a panic() if anything goes wrong.

sqlStatement := `INSERT INTO emp (ename, sal, email) 
VALUES ($1, $2, $3)`
_, err = db.Exec(sqlStatement, "Smith", 800, "smith@acme.com")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}

Step 5. Putting this all together

package main

// inserting records into a PostgreSQL database with Go's database/sql package
import (
	"database/sql"
	"fmt"
	_ "github.com/lib/pq"
)

const (
	host = "pgslx1005"
	port = 5432
	user = "postgres"
	password = "postgres"
	dbname = "connect-db"
)

func main() {
	connStr := fmt.Sprintf("host=%s port=%d user=%s "+
	"password=%s dbname=%s sslmode=disable",
	host, port, user, password, dbname)
	db, err := sql.Open("postgres", connStr)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer db.Close()
        
// insert a row
	sqlStatement := `INSERT INTO emp (ename, sal, email) 
	VALUES ($1, $2, $3)`
	_, err = db.Exec(sqlStatement, "Smith", 800, "smith@acme.com")
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	} else {
		fmt.Println("\nRow inserted successfully!")
	}
}

After inserting some additional rows, EMP table now looks like this

 | empno | ename | sal  | email          |
 |-------|-------|------|----------------|
 | 11    | Smith | 800  | smith@acme.com |
 | 12    | Allen | 1000 | allen@acme.com |
 | 13    | Jones | 1200 | jones@acme.com |
 | 14    | Blake | 1400 | blake@acme.com |

Conclusion

In this post we learned how to INSERT records (rows) in PostgreSQL db table via Go lang project. In the next post, I’ll explain about remaining two DML operations i.e. UPDATE and DELETE.

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Author: Varun Dhawan

Hello dear reader, I'm a Product Manager @Microsoft based in MN, US (beautiful land of 10,000 lakes). I am perpetually curious and always willing to learn and engineer systems that can help solve complex problems using data. When I am not engineering or blogging, you’ll find me cooking and spending time with my family. Varun.Dhawan@gmail.com View all posts by Varun Dhawan