Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn about PostgreSQL data types including Boolean, character, numeric, temporal, array, json, UUID, and special types.
PostgreSQL supports the following data types:
char
, varchar
, and text
.A Boolean data type can hold one of three possible values: true, false, or null. You use boolean
or bool
keyword to declare a column with the Boolean data type.
When you insert data into a Boolean column, PostgreSQL converts it to a Boolean value
1
, yes
, y
, t
, true
values are converted to true
0
, no
, false
, f
values are converted to false
.When you select data from a Boolean column, PostgreSQL converts the values back e.g., t
to true, f
to false
and space
to null
.
PostgreSQL provides three character data types: CHAR(n)
, VARCHAR(n)
, and TEXT
CHAR(n)
is the fixed-length character with space padded. If you insert a string that is shorter than the length of the column, PostgreSQL pads spaces. If you insert a string that is longer than the length of the column, PostgreSQL will issue an error.VARCHAR(n)
is the variable-length character string. The VARCHAR(n)
allows you to store up to n
characters. PostgreSQL does not pad spaces when the stored string is shorter than the length of the column.TEXT
is the variable-length character string. Theoretically, text data is a character string with unlimited length.PostgreSQL provides two distinct types of numbers:
There are three kinds of integers in PostgreSQL:
SMALLINT
) is a 2-byte signed integer that has a range from -32,768 to 32,767.INT
) is a 4-byte integer that has a range from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647.SERIAL
column. This is similar to AUTO_INCREMENT
column in MySQL or AUTOINCREMENT
column in SQLite.There are three main types of floating-point numbers:
float(n)
is a floating-point number whose precision, is at least, n, up to a maximum of 8 bytes.real
or float8
is a 4-byte floating-point number.numeric
or numeric(p,s)
is a real number with p digits with s number after the decimal point. This numeric(p,s)
is the exact number.The temporal data types allow you to store date and /or time data. PostgreSQL has five main temporal data types:
DATE
stores the dates only.TIME
stores the time of day values.TIMESTAMP
stores both date and time values.TIMESTAMPTZ
is a timezone-aware timestamp data type. It is the abbreviation for timestamp with the time zone.INTERVAL
stores periods.The TIMESTAMPTZ
is PostgreSQL’s extension to the SQL standard’s temporal data types.
In PostgreSQL, you can store an array of strings, an array of integers, etc., in array columns. The array comes in handy in some situations e.g., storing days of the week, and months of the year.
PostgreSQL provides two JSON data types: JSON
and JSONB
for storing JSON data.
The JSON
data type stores plain JSON data that requires reparsing for each processing, while JSONB
data type stores JSON
data in a binary format which is faster to process but slower to insert. In addition, JSONB
supports indexing, which can be an advantage.
The UUID
data type allows you to store Universal Unique Identifiers defined by RFC 4122 . The UUID
values guarantee a better uniqueness than SERIAL
and can be used to hide sensitive data exposed to the public such as values of id
in URL.
Besides the primitive data types, PostgreSQL also provides several special data types related to geometry and network.
box
– a rectangular box.line
– a set of points.point
– a geometric pair of numbers.lseg
– a line segment.polygon
– a closed geometric.inet
– an IP4 address.macaddr
– a MAC address.In this tutorial, we have introduced you to the PostgreSQL data types so that you can use them to create tables in the next tutorial.
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