Create PostgreSQL ROLE (user) if it doesn't exist

Question

How do I write an SQL script to create a ROLE in PostgreSQL 9.1, but without raising an error if it already exists?

The current script simply has:

CR         


        

Answer 1

My team was hitting a situation with multiple databases on one server, depending on which database you connected to, the ROLE in question was not returned by SELECT * FROM pg_catalog.pg_user, as proposed by @erwin-brandstetter and @a_horse_with_no_name. The conditional block executed, and we hit role "my_user" already exists.

Unfortunately we aren't sure of exact conditions, but this solution works around the problem:

        DO  
        $body$
        BEGIN
            CREATE ROLE my_user LOGIN PASSWORD 'my_password';
        EXCEPTION WHEN others THEN
            RAISE NOTICE 'my_user role exists, not re-creating';
        END
        $body$

It could probably be made more specific to rule out other exceptions.