Get count of records affected by INSERT or UPDATE in Postgres

Question

My database driver for Postgres 8/9 does not return a count of records affected when executing INSERT or UPDATE.

Postgres offers the non-standard syntax "RETURNING" which seems like a good workaround. But what might be the syntax? The example returns the ID of a record, but I need a count.

INSERT INTO distributors (did, dname) VALUES (DEFAULT, 'XYZ Widgets') RETURNING did;

Answer 1

I agree w/ Milen, your driver should do this for you. What driver are you using and for what language? But if you are using plpgsql, you can use GET DIAGNOSTICS my_var = ROW_COUNT;

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/plpgsql-statements.html