Adding a new value to an existing ENUM Type

Question

I have a table column that uses an enum type. I wish to update that enum type to have an additional possible value. I don\'t want to delete any exi

Answer 1

As discussed above, ALTER command cannot be written inside a transaction. The suggested way is to insert into the pg_enum table directly, by retrieving the typelem from pg_type table and calculating the next enumsortorder number;

Following is the code that I use. (Checks if duplicate value exists before inserting (constraint between enumtypid and enumlabel name)

INSERT INTO pg_enum (enumtypid, enumlabel, enumsortorder)
    SELECT typelem,
    'NEW_ENUM_VALUE',
    (SELECT MAX(enumsortorder) + 1 
        FROM pg_enum e
        JOIN pg_type p
        ON p.typelem = e.enumtypid
        WHERE p.typname = '_mytypename'
    )
    FROM pg_type p
    WHERE p.typname = '_mytypename'
    AND NOT EXISTS (
        SELECT * FROM 
        pg_enum e
        JOIN pg_type p
        ON p.typelem = e.enumtypid
        WHERE e.enumlabel = 'NEW_ENUM_VALUE'
        AND p.typname = '_mytypename'
    )

Note that your type name is prepended with an underscore in the pg_type table. Also, the typname needs to be all lowercase in the where clause.

Now this can be written safely into your db migrate script.