Macro in pgAdmin - get number of rows for query

Question

In pgAdmin, you can define your own macro with '$SELECTION$' placeholder. I have a macro to count number of rows in table:

select count(*) as rows_in_table from $SELECTION$;

This works well, but as I write a lot of queries at work I tought it would be nice to have macro to count rows for any select statement. The only way I found is to create function where two different situation are handled - only table name is selected or query is selected:

create or replace function sys.number_of_rows(in sql text)
  returns table (number_of_rows bigint) as
$body$
    begin
      sql:= 
        case 
          when position(' ' in trim(sql)) = 0 then 'select count(*) from ' || sql 
          else 'select count(*) from (' || sql || ') a ' end;
      return query execute sql;
    end;
$body$
  language plpgsql;

Now with macro select sys.number_of_rows('$SELECTION$'); I can pass either table name or whole query.

This works perfectly, but only when the function sys.number_of_rows exists in database. Any idea how to achieve the same functionality without being dependent on function?

Answer 1

If you replace $SELECTION$ with ( $SELECTION$ ) as t it should also work when your selection is a complete query.

I don't use pgAdmin, but my SQL client supports the same replacement technique and I use the same kind of macro there.