PostgreSQL - query from bash script as database user 'postgres'

Question

I have a table in my PostgreSQL database which has 3 columns - c_uid, c_defaults and c_settings. c_uid simply stores the

Answer 1

Once you're logged in as postgres, you should be able to write:

psql -t -d database_name -c $'SELECT c_defaults FROM user_info WHERE c_uid = \'testuser\';'

to print out just the value of that field, which means that you can capture it to (for example) save in a Bash variable:

testuser_defaults="$(psql -t -d database_name -c $'SELECT c_defaults FROM user_info WHERE c_uid = \'testuser\';')"

To handle the logging in as postgres, I recommend using sudo. You can give a specific user the permission to run

sudo -u postgres /path/to/this/script.sh

so that they can run just the one script as postgres.