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CREATE CONVERSION(7)
CREATE CONVERSION(7)

NAME

CREATE_CONVERSION - define a new encoding conversion

SYNOPSIS

CREATE [ DEFAULT ] CONVERSION name
    FOR source_encoding TO dest_encoding FROM function_name

DESCRIPTION

CREATE CONVERSION defines a new conversion between two character set encodings.

Conversions that are marked DEFAULT can be used for automatic encoding conversion between client and server. To support that usage, two conversions, from encoding A to B and from encoding B to A, must be defined.

To be able to create a conversion, you must have EXECUTE privilege on the function and CREATE privilege on the destination schema.

PARAMETERS

DEFAULT

The DEFAULT clause indicates that this conversion is the default for this particular source to destination encoding. There should be only one default encoding in a schema for the encoding pair.

name

The name of the conversion. The conversion name can be schema-qualified. If it is not, the conversion is defined in the current schema. The conversion name must be unique within a schema.

source_encoding

The source encoding name.

dest_encoding

The destination encoding name.

function_name

The function used to perform the conversion. The function name can be schema-qualified. If it is not, the function will be looked up in the path.

The function must have the following signature:
conv_proc(
    integer,  -- source encoding ID
    integer,  -- destination encoding ID
    cstring,  -- source string (null terminated C string)
    internal, -- destination (fill with a null terminated C string)
    integer,  -- source string length
    boolean   -- if true, dont throw an error if conversion fails
) RETURNS integer;
The return value is the number of source bytes that were successfully converted. If the last argument is false, the function must throw an error on invalid input, and the return value is always equal to the source string length.

NOTES

Neither the source nor the destination encoding can be SQL_ASCII, as the servers behavior for cases involving the SQL_ASCII “encoding” is hard-wired.

Use DROP CONVERSION to remove user-defined conversions.

The privileges required to create a conversion might be changed in a future release.

EXAMPLES

To create a conversion from encoding UTF8 to LATIN1 using myfunc:

CREATE CONVERSION myconv FOR UTF8 TO LATIN1 FROM myfunc;

COMPATIBILITY

CREATE CONVERSION is a PostgreSQL extension. There is no CREATE CONVERSION statement in the SQL standard, but a CREATE TRANSLATION statement that is very similar in purpose and syntax.