How do I cast a string to integer and have 0 in case of error in the cast with PostgreSQL?

Question

In PostgreSQL I have a table with a varchar column. The data is supposed to be integers and I need it in integer type in a query. Some values are empty strings. The followin

Answer 1

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION parse_int(s TEXT) RETURNS INT AS $$
BEGIN
  RETURN regexp_replace(('0' || s), '[^\d]', '', 'g')::INT;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

This function will always return 0 if there are no digits in the input string.

SELECT parse_int('test12_3test');

will return 123