PostgreSQL Insert Data

Insert Into

To insert data into a table in PostgreSQL, we use the INSERT INTO statement.

The following SQL statement will insert one row of data into the cars table you created in the previous chapter.

INSERT INTO cars (brand, model, year)
VALUES ('Ford', 'Mustang', 1964);

The SQL Shell application will return the following:

INSERT 0 1

Which means that 1 row was inserted.

Don't think about the 0, for now, just accept that it represents something else and will always be 0.

As you can see in the SQL statement above, string values must be written with apostrophes.

Numeric values can be written without apostrophes, but you can include them if you want.

To check the result we can display the table with this SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM cars;

Which will return this result:

brand | model | year
-------+---------+------
Ford | Mustang | 1964
(1 row)

To insert multiple rows of data, we use the same INSERT INTO statement, but with multiple values:

INSERT INTO cars (brand, model, year)
VALUES
  ('Volvo', 'p1800', 1968),
  ('BMW', 'M1', 1978),
  ('Toyota', 'Celica', 1975);

The SQL Shell application will return the following:

INSERT 0 3

Which means 3 rows were successfully inserted.

To check the result we can display the table with this SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM cars;

Click the "Run Example" button to see the result of the select statement.