pg_get_indexdef()

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Overview

The pg_get_indexdef() is a system catalog information function that reconstructs the PostgreSQL command used to retrieve the definition of a specified index.

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Syntax

Here are the two available syntax versions of the pg_get_indexdef() function:

pg_get_indexdef(index_oid, column_oid)

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Parameters

The following parameters are required to execute this function:

• index_oid: specifies the object identifier (OID) of the index
• column_oid: indicates the column number within the index (starting from 1)
• pretty_bool: controls whether to format the output in a human-readable way

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Example

In this example we’ll start from creating a sample table and an index for it

CREATE TABLE sample_table(col int);
CREATE INDEX sample_index ON sample_table(col);

Once that is done, we can get the OID of the index in a following way

SELECT oid FROM pg_class WHERE relname = 'sample_index';

 oid
------
 16387

As the last step we’re going to retrieve the index definition

SELECT pg_get_indexdef(16387);

Here is the reconstructed definition:

                    pg_get_indexdef
-------------------------------------------------------
 CREATE INDEX sample_index ON public.sample_table(col)
(1 row)