Multi-dimensional arrays can now be used as arguments to a PL/python function
(used to throw an error), and they can be returned as nested Python lists.
This makes a backwards-incompatible change to the handling of composite
types in arrays. Previously, you could return an array of composite types
as "[[col1, col2], [col1, col2]]", but now that is interpreted as a two-
dimensional array. Composite types in arrays must now be returned as
Python tuples, not lists, to resolve the ambiguity. I.e. "[(col1, col2),
(col1, col2)]".
To avoid breaking backwards-compatibility, when not necessary, () is still
accepted for arrays at the top-level, but it is always treated as a
single-dimensional array. Likewise, [] is still accepted for composite types,
when they are not in an array. Update the documentation to recommend using []
for arrays, and () for composite types, with a mention that those other things
are also accepted in some contexts.
This needs to be mentioned in the release notes.
Alexey Grishchenko, Dave Cramer and me. Reviewed by Pavel Stehule.
Discussion: <CAH38_tmbqwaUyKs9yagyRra=SMaT45FPBxk1pmTYcM0TyXGG7Q@mail.gmail.com>
PLyString_ToComposite() blithely overwrote proc->result.out.d, even though
for a composite result type the other union variant proc->result.out.r is
the one that should be valid. This could result in a crash if out.r had
in fact been filled in (proc->result.is_rowtype == 1) and then somebody
later attempted to use that data; as per bug #13579 from Paweł Michalak.
Just to add insult to injury, it didn't work for RECORD results anyway,
because record_in() would refuse the case.
Fix by doing the I/O function lookup in a local PLyTypeInfo variable,
as we were doing already in PLyObject_ToComposite(). This is not a great
technique because any fn_extra data allocated by the input function will
be leaked permanently (thanks to using TopMemoryContext as fn_mcxt).
But that's a pre-existing issue that is much less serious than a crash,
so leave it to be fixed separately.
This bug would be a potential security issue, except that plpython is
only available to superusers and the crash requires coding the function
in a way that didn't work before today's patches.
Add regression test cases covering all the supported methods of converting
composite results.
Back-patch to 9.1 where the faulty coding was introduced.
Allow PL/Python functions to return arrays of composite types.
Also, fix the restriction that plpy.prepare/plpy.execute couldn't
handle query parameters or result columns of composite types.
In passing, adopt a saner arrangement for where to release the
tupledesc reference counts acquired via lookup_rowtype_tupdesc.
The callers of PLyObject_ToCompositeDatum were doing the lookups,
but then the releases happened somewhere down inside subroutines
of PLyObject_ToCompositeDatum, which is bizarre and bug-prone.
Instead release in the same function that acquires the refcount.
Ed Behn and Ronan Dunklau, reviewed by Abhijit Menon-Sen
This allows functions with multiple OUT parameters returning both one
or multiple records (RECORD or SETOF RECORD).
Jan Urbański, reviewed by Hitoshi Harada