PostgreSQL BEFORE TRUNCATE Trigger

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to define a PostgreSQL BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger that fires before a TRUNCATE event occurs on a table.

Introduction to the PostgreSQL BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger

A TRUNCATE TABLE statement removes all from a table without creating any logs, making it faster than a DELETE operation.

PostgreSQL allows you to create a trigger that fires before a TRUNCATE event occurs.

A BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger is a statement-level trigger because the TRUNCATE statement deletes all the rows from the table, not individual rows.

Although the TRUNCATE operation deletes rows from a table, it does not activate the DELETE trigger including BEFORE and AFTER DELETE triggers.

Here’s the step for creating a BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger:

First, define a user-defined function that will execute before the TRUNCATE event:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION trigger_function_name()
RETURNS TRIGGER AS
$$
BEGIN
    -- This logic will be executed before the TRUNCATE operation
    -- ...
    RETURN NULL;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

The function returns NULL indicating that the trigger doesn’t return additional output.

Second, create a BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger and associate the function with it:

CREATE TRIGGER trigger_name
BEFORE TRUNCATE ON table_name
FOR EACH STATEMENT
EXECUTE FUNCTION trigger_function_name();

Since the BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger is a statement-level trigger, you need to specify the FOR EACH STATEMENT clause in the CREATE TRIGGER statement.

Unlike INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE, which support BEFORE and AFTER trigger types, TRUNCATE only supports BEFORE triggers.

PostgreSQL BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger example

We’ll create a BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger to prevent applications from truncating a table.

First, create a new table called companies to store company data:

CREATE TABLE companies(
   id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
   name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL
);

Second, insert some rows into the companies table:

INSERT INTO companies(name)
VALUES ('Apple'),
       ('Microsoft'),
       ('Google')
RETURNING *;

Output:

id |   name
----+-----------
  1 | Apple
  2 | Microsoft
  3 | Google
(3 rows)

Third, define a function that will execute when a TRUNCATE event occurs:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION before_truncate_companies()
RETURNS TRIGGER AS
$$
BEGIN
    RAISE NOTICE 'Truncating the companies table is not allowed';
    RETURN NULL;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Fourth, create a trigger that fires before a TRUNCATE event occurs:

CREATE TRIGGER before_truncate_companies_trigger
BEFORE TRUNCATE ON companies
FOR EACH STATEMENT
EXECUTE FUNCTION before_truncate_companies();

Fifth, attempt to truncate the companies table:

TRUNCATE TABLE companies;

Output:

NOTICE:  Truncating the companies table is not allowed
TRUNCATE TABLE

The output indicates that the BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger fires, raising an exception that aborts the TRUNCATE operation.

Summary

• A BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger is a statement-level trigger.
• Create a BEFORE TRUNCATE trigger to fire before a TRUNCATE event.