autoinc

autoinc : functions for autoincrementing fields

Overview

ID	Extension	Package	Version	Category	License	Language
4881	autoinc	autoinc	`1.0`	FUNC	PostgreSQL	C

Attribute	Has Binary	Has Library	Need Load	Has DDL	Relocatable	Trusted
--s-d--	No	Yes	No	Yes	no	no

Relationships
See Also	pg_idkit pgx_ulid pg_uuidv7 permuteseq pg_hashids sequential_uuids topn quantile

Packages

PG18	PG17	PG16	PG15	PG14
1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.0

This is a built-in contrib extension ship with the PostgreSQL kernel

Install

Create this extension with:

CREATE EXTENSION autoinc;

Usage

autoinc: auto-increment trigger function

Provides a trigger function that auto-increments specified columns using sequences.

CREATE EXTENSION autoinc;

Trigger Function

Function	Description
`autoinc()`	Auto-increment columns from sequences on insert (and optionally update)

Parameters are pairs of (column name, sequence name). The value is replaced only if initially zero or NULL.

Examples

CREATE SEQUENCE next_id;
CREATE TABLE ids (id int4, idesc text);

CREATE TRIGGER ids_autoinc
  BEFORE INSERT ON ids
  FOR EACH ROW
  EXECUTE FUNCTION autoinc('id', 'next_id');

INSERT INTO ids (idesc) VALUES ('first');  -- id is auto-assigned from next_id

-- Multiple auto-increment columns
CREATE TRIGGER multi_autoinc
  BEFORE INSERT ON my_table
  FOR EACH ROW
  EXECUTE FUNCTION autoinc('col1', 'seq1', 'col2', 'seq2');

Last updated on 2026-03-12

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