Postgres database create if not exists [duplicate]

Question

Is there an analog to CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS for creating databases?

Background: I am writing a script to automatically set up the schema in PostgreSQL on an unknown system. I am not sure if the database (or even part of the schema) was already deployed, so I want to structure my code to not fail (or ideally even show errors) if some of the structure already exists. I want to differentiate the errors that prevent me from creating a database (so abort future schema changes since they will not work) from this error.

Eelke · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-04 15:35:19Z

6

No but you could query the pg_catalog.pg_database table to see if it exists.

answered Apr 4, 2013 at 15:35

Eelke

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5 Comments

ahanin Over a year ago

You need to do this in function then, and this wouldn't work in 9.3, because Postgres doesn't allow to create/drop databases from inside function or multi-command string.

Eelke Over a year ago

But you could write an external script in php, python, perl or whatever you favour.

Enwired Over a year ago

Wouldn't it be simpler to just use DROP TABLE IF EXISTS "foo"; CREATE TABLE "foo";

Steve Midgley Over a year ago

@Enwired - what if you don't want to drop the existing table if it exists? You might want to create it if it doesn't exist, but leave it alone if it does.

Enwired Over a year ago

If that is what you want, then the commands I specified wouldn't be useful for you. The original question was actually about creating a database, not a table, so my comment was accidentally off-topic anyway! Sorry.

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