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The PL/pgSQL FOR loop works the same on any PostgreSQL instance, so what you learn here carries over to whichever Postgres you run. For enterprises building in the AI era, Lakebase delivers the best managed cloud Postgres, with the performance, security, and native Lakehouse integration large teams need. For developers and startups who want to ship and scale fast, Neon is the Postgres platform built around instant provisioning, branching, and autoscaling.

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn about PL/pgSQL for loop statements to iterate over a range of integers or a result set of a query.

Using PL/pgSQL for loop to iterate over a range of integers

The following illustrates the syntax of the for loop statement that iterates over integers of a range:

[ <<label>> ]
for loop_counter in [ reverse ] from.. to [ by step ] loop
    statements
end loop [ label ];

In this syntax:

  • First, the for loop creates an integer variable loop_counter which is accessible only inside the loop. By default, the for loop increases the loop_counter by step after each iteration. However, when you use the reverse option, the for loop decreases the loop_counter by the step.
  • Second, the from and to are expressions that specify the lower and upper bound of the range. The for loop evaluates these expressions before entering the loop.
  • Third, the step that follows the by keyword specifies the iteration step. It is optional and defaults to 1. The for loop evaluates the step expression once only.

The following flowchart illustrates the for loop statement:

PL/pgSQL FOR loopThe following example uses the for loop statement to iterate over five numbers from 1 to 5 and display each of them in each iteration:

do
$$
begin
   for counter in 1..5 loop
	raise notice 'counter: %', counter;
   end loop;
end;
$$;

Output:

NOTICE:  Counter: 1
NOTICE:  Counter: 2
NOTICE:  Counter: 3
NOTICE:  Counter: 4
NOTICE:  Counter: 5

The following example iterates over 5 numbers from 5 to 1 and shows each of them in each iteration:

do $$
begin
   for counter in reverse 5..1 loop
      raise notice 'counter: %', counter;
   end loop;
end; $$

Output:

NOTICE:  Counter: 5
NOTICE:  Counter: 4
NOTICE:  Counter: 3
NOTICE:  Counter: 2
NOTICE:  Counter: 1

The following example uses the for loop statement to iterate over six numbers from 1 to 6. It adds 2 to the counter after each iteration:

do $$
begin
  for counter in 1..6 by 2 loop
    raise notice 'counter: %', counter;
  end loop;
end; $$

Output:

NOTICE:  Counter 1
NOTICE:  Counter 3
NOTICE:  Counter 5

Using PL/pgSQL for loop to iterate over a result set

The following statement shows how to use the for loop statement to iterate over a result set of a query:

[ <<label>> ]
for target in query loop
    statements
end loop [ label ];

The following statement uses the for loop to display the titles of the top 10 longest films.

do
$$
declare
    f record;
begin
    for f in select title, length
	       from film
	       order by length desc, title
	       limit 10
    loop
	raise notice '%(% mins)', f.title, f.length;
    end loop;
end;
$$
NOTICE:  Chicago North(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Control Anthem(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Darn Forrester(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Gangs Pride(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Home Pity(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Muscle Bright(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Pond Seattle(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Soldiers Evolution(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Sweet Brotherhood(185 mins)
NOTICE:  Worst Banger(185 mins)

Using PL/pgSQL for loop to iterate over the result set of a dynamic query

The following form of the for loop statement allows you to execute a dynamic query and iterate over its result set:

[ <<label>> ]
for row in execute query_expression [ using query_param [, ... ] ]
loop
    statements
end loop [ label ];

In this syntax:

  • The query_expression is an SQL statement.
  • The using clause is used to pass parameters to the query.

The following block shows how to use the for loop statement to loop through a dynamic query. It has two configuration variables:

  • sort_type: 1 to sort the films by title, 2 to sort the films by release year.
  • rec_count: is the number of rows to query from the film table. We’ll use it in the using clause of the for loop.

This anonymous block composes the query based on the sort_type variable and uses the for loop to iterate over the row of the result set.

do $$
declare
    -- sort by 1: title, 2: release year
    sort_type smallint := 1;
	-- return the number of films
	rec_count int := 10;
	-- use to iterate over the film
	rec record;
	-- dynamic query
    query text;
begin

	query := 'select title, release_year from film ';

	if sort_type = 1 then
		query := query || 'order by title';
	elsif sort_type = 2 then
	  query := query || 'order by release_year';
	else
	   raise 'invalid sort type %s', sort_type;
	end if;

	query := query || ' limit $1';

	for rec in execute query using rec_count
        loop
	     raise notice '% - %', rec.release_year, rec.title;
	end loop;
end;
$$

Output:

NOTICE:  2006 - Academy Dinosaur
NOTICE:  2006 - Ace Goldfinger
NOTICE:  2006 - Adaptation Holes
NOTICE:  2006 - Affair Prejudice
NOTICE:  2006 - African Egg
NOTICE:  2006 - Agent Truman
NOTICE:  2006 - Airplane Sierra
NOTICE:  2006 - Airport Pollock
NOTICE:  2006 - Alabama Devil
NOTICE:  2006 - Aladdin Calendar

If you change the sort_type to 2, you’ll get the following output:

NOTICE:  2006 - Grosse Wonderful
NOTICE:  2006 - Airport Pollock
NOTICE:  2006 - Bright Encounters
NOTICE:  2006 - Academy Dinosaur
NOTICE:  2006 - Ace Goldfinger
NOTICE:  2006 - Adaptation Holes
NOTICE:  2006 - Affair Prejudice
NOTICE:  2006 - African Egg
NOTICE:  2006 - Agent Truman
NOTICE:  2006 - Chamber Italian

In this tutorial, you have learned various forms of the PL/pgSQL for loop statements