A useful extension to PostgreSQL typically includes multiple SQL objects; for example, a new data type will require new functions, new operators, and probably new index operator classes. It is helpful to collect all these objects into a single package to simplify database management. PostgreSQL calls such a package an extension. To define an extension, you need at least a script file that contains the SQL commands to create the extension's objects, and a control file that specifies a few basic properties of the extension itself. If the extension includes C code, there will typically also be a shared library file into which the C code has been built. Once you have these files, a simple CREATE EXTENSION command loads the objects into your database.
The main advantage of using an extension, rather than just running the
SQL script to load a bunch of “loose” objects
into your database, is that PostgreSQL will then
understand that the objects of the extension go together. You can
drop all the objects with a single DROP EXTENSION
command (no need to maintain a separate “uninstall” script).
Even more useful, pg_dump knows that it should not
dump the individual member objects of the extension — it will
just include a CREATE EXTENSION
command in dumps, instead.
This vastly simplifies migration to a new version of the extension
that might contain more or different objects than the old version.
Note however that you must have the extension's control, script, and
other files available when loading such a dump into a new database.
PostgreSQL will not let you drop an individual object
contained in an extension, except by dropping the whole extension.
Also, while you can change the definition of an extension member object
(for example, via CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION
for a
function), bear in mind that the modified definition will not be dumped
by pg_dump. Such a change is usually only sensible if
you concurrently make the same change in the extension's script file.
(But there are special provisions for tables containing configuration
data; see Section 37.15.3.)
In production situations, it's generally better to create an extension
update script to perform changes to extension member objects.
The extension script may set privileges on objects that are part of the
extension via GRANT
and REVOKE
statements. The final set of privileges for each object (if any are set)
will be stored in the
pg_init_privs
system catalog. When pg_dump is used, the
CREATE EXTENSION
command will be included in the dump, followed
by the set of GRANT
and REVOKE
statements necessary to set the privileges on the objects to what they were
at the time the dump was taken.
PostgreSQL does not currently support extension scripts
issuing CREATE POLICY
or SECURITY LABEL
statements. These are expected to be set after the extension has been
created. All RLS policies and security labels on extension objects will be
included in dumps created by pg_dump.
The extension mechanism also has provisions for packaging modification
scripts that adjust the definitions of the SQL objects contained in an
extension. For example, if version 1.1 of an extension adds one function
and changes the body of another function compared to 1.0, the extension
author can provide an update script that makes just those
two changes. The ALTER EXTENSION UPDATE
command can then
be used to apply these changes and track which version of the extension
is actually installed in a given database.
The kinds of SQL objects that can be members of an extension are shown in the description of ALTER EXTENSION. Notably, objects that are database-cluster-wide, such as databases, roles, and tablespaces, cannot be extension members since an extension is only known within one database. (Although an extension script is not prohibited from creating such objects, if it does so they will not be tracked as part of the extension.) Also notice that while a table can be a member of an extension, its subsidiary objects such as indexes are not directly considered members of the extension. Another important point is that schemas can belong to extensions, but not vice versa: an extension as such has an unqualified name and does not exist “within” any schema. The extension's member objects, however, will belong to schemas whenever appropriate for their object types. It may or may not be appropriate for an extension to own the schema(s) its member objects are within.
If an extension's script creates any temporary objects (such as temp tables), those objects are treated as extension members for the remainder of the current session, but are automatically dropped at session end, as any temporary object would be. This is an exception to the rule that extension member objects cannot be dropped without dropping the whole extension.
The CREATE EXTENSION command relies on a control
file for each extension, which must be named the same as the extension
with a suffix of .control
, and must be placed in the
installation's SHAREDIR/extension
directory. There
must also be at least one SQL script file, which follows the
naming pattern
(for example, extension
--version
.sqlfoo--1.0.sql
for version 1.0
of
extension foo
). By default, the script file(s) are also
placed in the SHAREDIR/extension
directory; but the
control file can specify a different directory for the script file(s).
The file format for an extension control file is the same as for the
postgresql.conf
file, namely a list of
parameter_name
=
value
assignments, one per line. Blank lines and comments introduced by
#
are allowed. Be sure to quote any value that is not
a single word or number.
A control file can set the following parameters:
directory
(string
) The directory containing the extension's SQL script
file(s). Unless an absolute path is given, the name is relative to
the installation's SHAREDIR
directory. The
default behavior is equivalent to specifying
directory = 'extension'
.
default_version
(string
) The default version of the extension (the one that will be installed
if no version is specified in CREATE EXTENSION
). Although
this can be omitted, that will result in CREATE EXTENSION
failing if no VERSION
option appears, so you generally
don't want to do that.
comment
(string
)A comment (any string) about the extension. The comment is applied when initially creating an extension, but not during extension updates (since that might override user-added comments). Alternatively, the extension's comment can be set by writing a COMMENT command in the script file.
encoding
(string
)The character set encoding used by the script file(s). This should be specified if the script files contain any non-ASCII characters. Otherwise the files will be assumed to be in the database encoding.
module_pathname
(string
) The value of this parameter will be substituted for each occurrence
of MODULE_PATHNAME
in the script file(s). If it is not
set, no substitution is made. Typically, this is set to
$libdir/
and
then shared_library_name
MODULE_PATHNAME
is used in CREATE
FUNCTION
commands for C-language functions, so that the script
files do not need to hard-wire the name of the shared library.
requires
(string
) A list of names of extensions that this extension depends on,
for example requires = 'foo, bar'
. Those
extensions must be installed before this one can be installed.
superuser
(boolean
) If this parameter is true
(which is the default),
only superusers can create the extension or update it to a new
version. If it is set to false
, just the privileges
required to execute the commands in the installation or update script
are required.
relocatable
(boolean
) An extension is relocatable if it is possible to move
its contained objects into a different schema after initial creation
of the extension. The default is false
, i.e. the
extension is not relocatable.
See Section 37.15.2 for more information.
schema
(string
) This parameter can only be set for non-relocatable extensions.
It forces the extension to be loaded into exactly the named schema
and not any other.
The schema
parameter is consulted only when
initially creating an extension, not during extension updates.
See Section 37.15.2 for more information.
In addition to the primary control file
,
an extension can have secondary control files named in the style
extension
.control
.
If supplied, these must be located in the script file directory.
Secondary control files follow the same format as the primary control
file. Any parameters set in a secondary control file override the
primary control file when installing or updating to that version of
the extension. However, the parameters extension
--version
.controldirectory
and
default_version
cannot be set in a secondary control file.
An extension's SQL script files can contain any SQL commands,
except for transaction control commands (BEGIN
,
COMMIT
, etc) and commands that cannot be executed inside a
transaction block (such as VACUUM
). This is because the
script files are implicitly executed within a transaction block.
An extension's SQL script files can also contain lines
beginning with \echo
, which will be ignored (treated as
comments) by the extension mechanism. This provision is commonly used
to throw an error if the script file is fed to psql
rather than being loaded via CREATE EXTENSION
(see example
script in Section 37.15.6).
Without that, users might accidentally load the
extension's contents as “loose” objects rather than as an
extension, a state of affairs that's a bit tedious to recover from.
While the script files can contain any characters allowed by the specified
encoding, control files should contain only plain ASCII, because there
is no way for PostgreSQL to know what encoding a
control file is in. In practice this is only an issue if you want to
use non-ASCII characters in the extension's comment. Recommended
practice in that case is to not use the control file comment
parameter, but instead use COMMENT ON EXTENSION
within a script file to set the comment.
Users often wish to load the objects contained in an extension into a different schema than the extension's author had in mind. There are three supported levels of relocatability:
A fully relocatable extension can be moved into another schema
at any time, even after it's been loaded into a database.
This is done with the ALTER EXTENSION SET SCHEMA
command, which automatically renames all the member objects into
the new schema. Normally, this is only possible if the extension
contains no internal assumptions about what schema any of its
objects are in. Also, the extension's objects must all be in one
schema to begin with (ignoring objects that do not belong to any
schema, such as procedural languages). Mark a fully relocatable
extension by setting relocatable = true
in its control
file.
An extension might be relocatable during installation but not
afterwards. This is typically the case if the extension's script
file needs to reference the target schema explicitly, for example
in setting search_path
properties for SQL functions.
For such an extension, set relocatable = false
in its
control file, and use @extschema@
to refer to the target
schema in the script file. All occurrences of this string will be
replaced by the actual target schema's name before the script is
executed. The user can set the target schema using the
SCHEMA
option of CREATE EXTENSION
.
If the extension does not support relocation at all, set
relocatable = false
in its control file, and also set
schema
to the name of the intended target schema. This
will prevent use of the SCHEMA
option of CREATE
EXTENSION
, unless it specifies the same schema named in the control
file. This choice is typically necessary if the extension contains
internal assumptions about schema names that can't be replaced by
uses of @extschema@
. The @extschema@
substitution mechanism is available in this case too, although it is
of limited use since the schema name is determined by the control file.
In all cases, the script file will be executed with
search_path initially set to point to the target
schema; that is, CREATE EXTENSION
does the equivalent of
this:
SET LOCAL search_path TO @extschema@;
This allows the objects created by the script file to go into the target
schema. The script file can change search_path
if it wishes,
but that is generally undesirable. search_path
is restored
to its previous setting upon completion of CREATE EXTENSION
.
The target schema is determined by the schema
parameter in
the control file if that is given, otherwise by the SCHEMA
option of CREATE EXTENSION
if that is given, otherwise the
current default object creation schema (the first one in the caller's
search_path
). When the control file schema
parameter is used, the target schema will be created if it doesn't
already exist, but in the other two cases it must already exist.
If any prerequisite extensions are listed in requires
in the control file, their target schemas are appended to the initial
setting of search_path
. This allows their objects to be
visible to the new extension's script file.
Although a non-relocatable extension can contain objects spread across
multiple schemas, it is usually desirable to place all the objects meant
for external use into a single schema, which is considered the extension's
target schema. Such an arrangement works conveniently with the default
setting of search_path
during creation of dependent
extensions.
Some extensions include configuration tables, which contain data that might be added or changed by the user after installation of the extension. Ordinarily, if a table is part of an extension, neither the table's definition nor its content will be dumped by pg_dump. But that behavior is undesirable for a configuration table; any data changes made by the user need to be included in dumps, or the extension will behave differently after a dump and reload.
To solve this problem, an extension's script file can mark a table
or a sequence it has created as a configuration relation, which will
cause pg_dump to include the table's or the sequence's
contents (not its definition) in dumps. To do that, call the function
pg_extension_config_dump(regclass, text)
after creating the
table or the sequence, for example
CREATE TABLE my_config (key text, value text); CREATE SEQUENCE my_config_seq; SELECT pg_catalog.pg_extension_config_dump('my_config', ''); SELECT pg_catalog.pg_extension_config_dump('my_config_seq', '');
Any number of tables or sequences can be marked this way. Sequences
associated with serial
or bigserial
columns can
be marked as well.
When the second argument of pg_extension_config_dump
is
an empty string, the entire contents of the table are dumped by
pg_dump. This is usually only correct if the table
is initially empty as created by the extension script. If there is
a mixture of initial data and user-provided data in the table,
the second argument of pg_extension_config_dump
provides
a WHERE
condition that selects the data to be dumped.
For example, you might do
CREATE TABLE my_config (key text, value text, standard_entry boolean); SELECT pg_catalog.pg_extension_config_dump('my_config', 'WHERE NOT standard_entry');
and then make sure that standard_entry
is true only
in the rows created by the extension's script.
For sequences, the second argument of pg_extension_config_dump
has no effect.
More complicated situations, such as initially-provided rows that might be modified by users, can be handled by creating triggers on the configuration table to ensure that modified rows are marked correctly.
You can alter the filter condition associated with a configuration table
by calling pg_extension_config_dump
again. (This would
typically be useful in an extension update script.) The only way to mark
a table as no longer a configuration table is to dissociate it from the
extension with ALTER EXTENSION ... DROP TABLE
.
Note that foreign key relationships between these tables will dictate the order in which the tables are dumped out by pg_dump. Specifically, pg_dump will attempt to dump the referenced-by table before the referencing table. As the foreign key relationships are set up at CREATE EXTENSION time (prior to data being loaded into the tables) circular dependencies are not supported. When circular dependencies exist, the data will still be dumped out but the dump will not be able to be restored directly and user intervention will be required.
Sequences associated with serial
or bigserial
columns
need to be directly marked to dump their state. Marking their parent
relation is not enough for this purpose.
One advantage of the extension mechanism is that it provides convenient
ways to manage updates to the SQL commands that define an extension's
objects. This is done by associating a version name or number with
each released version of the extension's installation script.
In addition, if you want users to be able to update their databases
dynamically from one version to the next, you should provide
update scripts that make the necessary changes to go from
one version to the next. Update scripts have names following the pattern
(for example, extension
--oldversion
--newversion
.sqlfoo--1.0--1.1.sql
contains the commands to modify
version 1.0
of extension foo
into version
1.1
).
Given that a suitable update script is available, the command
ALTER EXTENSION UPDATE
will update an installed extension
to the specified new version. The update script is run in the same
environment that CREATE EXTENSION
provides for installation
scripts: in particular, search_path
is set up in the same
way, and any new objects created by the script are automatically added
to the extension. Also, if the script chooses to drop extension member
objects, they are automatically dissociated from the extension.
If an extension has secondary control files, the control parameters that are used for an update script are those associated with the script's target (new) version.
The update mechanism can be used to solve an important special case:
converting a “loose” collection of objects into an extension.
Before the extension mechanism was added to
PostgreSQL (in 9.1), many people wrote
extension modules that simply created assorted unpackaged objects.
Given an existing database containing such objects, how can we convert
the objects into a properly packaged extension? Dropping them and then
doing a plain CREATE EXTENSION
is one way, but it's not
desirable if the objects have dependencies (for example, if there are
table columns of a data type created by the extension). The way to fix
this situation is to create an empty extension, then use ALTER
EXTENSION ADD
to attach each pre-existing object to the extension,
then finally create any new objects that are in the current extension
version but were not in the unpackaged release. CREATE
EXTENSION
supports this case with its FROM
old_version
option, which causes it to not run the
normal installation script for the target version, but instead the update
script named
.
The choice of the dummy version name to use as extension
--old_version
--target_version
.sqlold_version
is up to the extension author, though
unpackaged
is a common convention. If you have multiple
prior versions you need to be able to update into extension style, use
multiple dummy version names to identify them.
ALTER EXTENSION
is able to execute sequences of update
script files to achieve a requested update. For example, if only
foo--1.0--1.1.sql
and foo--1.1--2.0.sql
are
available, ALTER EXTENSION
will apply them in sequence if an
update to version 2.0
is requested when 1.0
is
currently installed.
PostgreSQL doesn't assume anything about the properties
of version names: for example, it does not know whether 1.1
follows 1.0
. It just matches up the available version names
and follows the path that requires applying the fewest update scripts.
(A version name can actually be any string that doesn't contain
--
or leading or trailing -
.)
Sometimes it is useful to provide “downgrade” scripts, for
example foo--1.1--1.0.sql
to allow reverting the changes
associated with version 1.1
. If you do that, be careful
of the possibility that a downgrade script might unexpectedly
get applied because it yields a shorter path. The risky case is where
there is a “fast path” update script that jumps ahead several
versions as well as a downgrade script to the fast path's start point.
It might take fewer steps to apply the downgrade and then the fast
path than to move ahead one version at a time. If the downgrade script
drops any irreplaceable objects, this will yield undesirable results.
To check for unexpected update paths, use this command:
SELECT * FROM pg_extension_update_paths('extension_name
');
This shows each pair of distinct known version names for the specified
extension, together with the update path sequence that would be taken to
get from the source version to the target version, or NULL
if
there is no available update path. The path is shown in textual form
with --
separators. You can use
regexp_split_to_array(path,'--')
if you prefer an array
format.
An extension that has been around for awhile will probably exist in
several versions, for which the author will need to write update scripts.
For example, if you have released a foo
extension in
versions 1.0
, 1.1
, and 1.2
, there
should be update scripts foo--1.0--1.1.sql
and foo--1.1--1.2.sql
.
Before PostgreSQL 10, it was necessary to also create
new script files foo--1.1.sql
and foo--1.2.sql
that directly build the newer extension versions, or else the newer
versions could not be installed directly, only by
installing 1.0
and then updating. That was tedious and
duplicative, but now it's unnecessary, because CREATE
EXTENSION
can follow update chains automatically.
For example, if only the script
files foo--1.0.sql
, foo--1.0--1.1.sql
,
and foo--1.1--1.2.sql
are available then a request to
install version 1.2
is honored by running those three
scripts in sequence. The processing is the same as if you'd first
installed 1.0
and then updated to 1.2
.
(As with ALTER EXTENSION UPDATE
, if multiple pathways are
available then the shortest is preferred.) Arranging an extension's
script files in this style can reduce the amount of maintenance effort
needed to produce small updates.
If you use secondary (version-specific) control files with an extension
maintained in this style, keep in mind that each version needs a control
file even if it has no stand-alone installation script, as that control
file will determine how the implicit update to that version is performed.
For example, if foo--1.0.control
specifies requires
= 'bar'
but foo
's other control files do not, the
extension's dependency on bar
will be dropped when updating
from 1.0
to another version.
Here is a complete example of an SQL-only extension, a two-element composite type that can store any type of value in its slots, which are named “k” and “v”. Non-text values are automatically coerced to text for storage.
The script file pair--1.0.sql
looks like this:
-- complain if script is sourced in psql, rather than via CREATE EXTENSION \echo Use "CREATE EXTENSION pair" to load this file. \quit CREATE TYPE pair AS ( k text, v text ); CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pair(anyelement, text) RETURNS pair LANGUAGE SQL AS 'SELECT ROW($1, $2)::pair'; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pair(text, anyelement) RETURNS pair LANGUAGE SQL AS 'SELECT ROW($1, $2)::pair'; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pair(anyelement, anyelement) RETURNS pair LANGUAGE SQL AS 'SELECT ROW($1, $2)::pair'; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pair(text, text) RETURNS pair LANGUAGE SQL AS 'SELECT ROW($1, $2)::pair;'; CREATE OPERATOR ~> (LEFTARG = text, RIGHTARG = anyelement, PROCEDURE = pair); CREATE OPERATOR ~> (LEFTARG = anyelement, RIGHTARG = text, PROCEDURE = pair); CREATE OPERATOR ~> (LEFTARG = anyelement, RIGHTARG = anyelement, PROCEDURE = pair); CREATE OPERATOR ~> (LEFTARG = text, RIGHTARG = text, PROCEDURE = pair);
The control file pair.control
looks like this:
# pair extension comment = 'A key/value pair data type' default_version = '1.0' relocatable = true
While you hardly need a makefile to install these two files into the
correct directory, you could use a Makefile
containing this:
EXTENSION = pair DATA = pair--1.0.sql PG_CONFIG = pg_config PGXS := $(shell $(PG_CONFIG) --pgxs) include $(PGXS)
This makefile relies on PGXS, which is described
in Section 37.16. The command make install
will install the control and script files into the correct
directory as reported by pg_config.
Once the files are installed, use the CREATE EXTENSION command to load the objects into any particular database.