SQL NULL and Go zero values¶

Go zero values¶

By default all columns except primary keys are nullable and go-pg marshals Go zero values (empty string, 0, zero time, nil map, and nil slice) as SQL NULL. You can disable this behavior with pg:",use_zero"tag.

For insert queries you can also specify a default value for a column using pg:"default:now()" tag. In this case go-pg uses DEFAULT instead of NULL so PostgreSQL can generate a default value when it encounters DEFAULT.

Modeling NULL values¶

To represent SQL NULL, you can use pointers or sql.Null* types:

type Item struct {
    Active *bool
    // or
    Active sql.NullBool
}

For example:

• (*bool)(nil) and sql.NullBool{} represent NULL.
• (*bool)(false) and sql.NullBool{Valid: true} represent FALSE.
• (*bool)(true) and sql.NullBool{Valid: true, Value: true} represent TRUE.

Updating specific columns¶

To update list of key-value pairs:

kv := map[string]interface{}{
    "col1": "val1",
    "col2": 123,
}
db.Model(&kv).TableExpr("items").Update()

To update subset of columns on a struct:

db.Model(&item).Column("col1", "col2").Update()

To update non-zero struct fields:

db.Model(&item).WherePK().UpdateNotZero()