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docs: limitation when selecting related object that was modified by n after insert trigger #3254

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17 changes: 17 additions & 0 deletions docs/references/api/resource_embedding.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -816,6 +816,23 @@ Response:
}
}

.. note::

Selecting a related object right after doing an insert may give unexpected results if said object was modified in a trigger.
For example, let's say there's an ``AFTER INSERT`` trigger on ``films`` that inserts a new record to ``technical_specs``.
Doing the same ``POST`` request as above, but selecting ``select=title,technical_spec(*)`` instead, it would return:

.. code-block:: json

{
"title": "127 hours",
"techinal_specs": null
}

Since PostgREST does the insertion in a single transaction, the selection is done before the changes are made to the related table, that's why the ``technical_specs`` is empty.
In the future we'll implement the insertions of tables and embedded resources at the same time.
For now, an alternative is to use :ref:`table_functions` instead.
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I did not look deeper at the other stuff, but I would not put such a sentence in the docs.

Rather:

Suggested change
In the future we'll implement the insertions of tables and embedded resources at the same time.
For now, an alternative is to use :ref:`table_functions` instead.
An alternative is to use :ref:`table_functions` instead.

After all, you never know what the future holds ;)

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Wanted to give an idea of "working on it", but yeah, I see that it may be too optimistic.

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One more thought of this: Would you consider this a bug? The wording you took sounds like it. As such, I would not even add a note at all, but just create an issue in the bugtracker? The issue could then mention the workaround. We should not document bugs, I guess..

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@laurenceisla laurenceisla Feb 26, 2024

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I didn't consider this as a bug at first because of our design choice in executing the entire mutation/selection in a single query (I was wrong there, I said "single transaction" instead of "single query"). It's a PostgreSQL expected behavior so the mention of a heads-up seemed OK to me, in case someone encountered this.

But I get how this could be considered a bug if the design is prone to change. I'll open an issue regardless, with a full example to see if it's worth documenting or just track as bug.

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Added the issue #3286

Also, NVM the workaround, a more complicated query (with json aggregates) needs to be done in the function.


.. _nested_embedding:

Nested Embedding
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