Postgres error: null value in column "id" - during insert operation

Question

I use postgresql and yii2 framework. Well I got a very interesting error message:

SQLSTATE[23502]: Not null violation: 7 ERROR: null value in column "id" violates not-null constraint
DETAIL: Failing row contains (null, 1, null, null, null, null, 1, Demo, , , , 1998-01-01, , , , 345345435453453, , , , , 1, , , f, f, f, f, 10, f, 1, f, f, f, null, null, null, 1470477479, 1470477479, null).

But I checked my Insert command, and there is not "id" column there!

INSERT INTO "advertiser" ("languages", "type", "name", "display_name", "title", "about", "birthday", "gender", "country_id", "county_id", "city_id", "city_part", "street", "house_number", "phone", "public_email", "public_url", "motto", "message", "im_facebook", "im_skype", "has_viber", "has_whatsapp", "has_sms_response", "visible_birthday", "is_checked", "status", "version", "user_id", "created_at", "updated_at") VALUES (NULL, 1, 'Demo', '', '', '', '1998-01-01', 1, NULL, NULL, NULL, '', '', '', '345345435453453', '', '', '', '', '', '', FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, 10, NULL, 1, 1470477479, 1470477479) RETURNING "id"

So I really cannot understand this error message. I do not find that the Postgres or Yii try to insert a null ID value or what.

By the way here you can find the structure

                                                    Table "public.advertiser"
        Column         |          Type          |            Modifiers            | Storage  | Stats target | Description 
-----------------------+------------------------+---------------------------------+----------+--------------+-------------
 id                    | integer                | not null                        | plain    |              | 
 user_id               | integer                |                                 | plain    |              | 
 country_id            | integer                |                                 | plain    |              | 
 county_id             | integer                |                                 | plain    |              | 
 city_id               | integer                |                                 | plain    |              | 
 district_id           | integer                |                                 | plain    |              | 
 type                  | smallint               |                                 | plain    |              | 
 name                  | character varying(255) | not null                        | extended |              | 
 display_name          | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 title                 | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 about                 | text                   |                                 | extended |              | 
 birthday              | date                   | not null                        | plain    |              | 
 city_part             | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 street                | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 house_number          | character varying(20)  | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 phone                 | character varying(15)  | not null                        | extended |              | 
 public_email          | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 public_url            | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 motto                 | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 message               | text                   |                                 | extended |              | 
 gender                | smallint               | not null default 1              | plain    |              | 
 im_facebook           | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 im_skype              | character varying(255) | default NULL::character varying | extended |              | 
 has_viber             | boolean                | not null default false          | plain    |              | 
 has_whatsapp          | boolean                | not null default false          | plain    |              | 
 has_sms_response      | boolean                | not null default false          | plain    |              | 
 visible_birthday      | boolean                | not null default false          | plain    |              | 
 status                | smallint               | not null default 10             | plain    |              | 
 is_checked            | boolean                | not null default false          | plain    |              | 
 geo_latitude          | double precision       |                                 | plain    |              | 
 geo_longitude         | double precision       |                                 | plain    |              | 
 languages             | integer[]              |                                 | extended |              | 
 created_at            | integer                |                                 | plain    |              | 
 updated_at            | integer                |                                 | plain    |              | 
 version               | bigint                 | default 0                       | plain    |              | 
Indexes:
    "advertiser_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)

What is your advice? Where should I looking for the problem?

Answer 1

You aren't inserting a value for id . Since you don't explicitly set it, it's implicitly given a null value, which is, of course, not a valid value for a primary key column. You can avoid this entire situation by defining this column as serial instead of a plain old integer , and leave all the heavy lifting to the database.

Answer 2

The serial keyword is expanded at parse time and cannot be seen afterward.

From the version Postgresql 10 there is the following alternative:

id int GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY

It is supposed to conform to the SQL standard and thus be compatible with Oracle.

See this blog for more details.

Answer 3

Happened to me after reading a PostgreSQL10 dump into 9.6 database server. After that, the sequences that are to auto-create sequential IDs were lost.

This can be shown like this (in psql):

SELECT  column_name
,       column_default
FROM    information_schema.columns
WHERE   table_name = 'django_migrations'
ORDER BY 
    ordinal_position;

where django_migrations is the table name. It should show something like this:

 column_name |                column_default                 
-------------+-----------------------------------------------
 id          | nextval('django_migrations_id_seq'::regclass)
[...]

If the value in 'column_default' is empty, then the sequence is lost.

Answer 4

Change your existing primary key to serial . Read this for changing it

Changing primary key int type to serial

Answer 5

If you can't change to serial because reasons like client, management, db rights...

The database is probably using sequence .

Here are what to know about it : SELECT nextval('seq_nuu_filtreelement')

To read :

• http://www.neilconway.org/docs/sequences/
• https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-info.html#FUNCTIONS-INFO-CATALOG-TABLE

I did not manage to make pg_catalog.pg_get_serial_sequence('schema.table', 'id') work.

Thus I found the sequences in my database explorer and use the command :

SELECT nextval('seq_table_name')

Answer 6

If for some reason, you cannot change your schema to change the type of your id column from whatever it is presently to serialize ; then, you may insert the id along with the rest of your values like so:

(select max(id) + 1 from table)

Answer 7

Or if your id column already has a sequence set, try inserting with the keyword DEFAULT instead of NULL.

In MySQL, NULL would use the default value for a column, but not so in Postgres.

Your example query would be changed to this:

INSERT INTO "advertiser" ("languages", "type", "name", "display_name", "title", "about", "birthday", "gender", "country_id", "county_id", "city_id", "city_part", "street", "house_number", "phone", "public_email", "public_url", "motto", "message", "im_facebook", "im_skype", "has_viber", "has_whatsapp", "has_sms_response", "visible_birthday", "is_checked", "status", "version", "user_id", "created_at", "updated_at") VALUES (DEFAULT, 1, 'Demo', '', '', '', '1998-01-01', 1, NULL, NULL, NULL, '', '', '', '345345435453453', '', '', '', '', '', '', FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, 10, NULL, 1, 1470477479, 1470477479) RETURNING "id"

This answer shows using the DEFAULT keyword: insert DEFAULT values