libpqxx

Welcome to libpqxx, the C++ API to the PostgreSQL database management system.

Home page: http://pqxx.org/development/libpqxx/

Find libpqxx on Github: https://github.com/jtv/libpqxx

Documentation on Read The Docs: https://readthedocs.org/projects/libpqxx/

Compiling this package requires PostgreSQL to be installed – or at least the C headers and library for client development. The library builds on top of PostgreSQL’s standard C API, libpq, though your code won’t notice.

If you’re getting the code straight from the Git repo, the master branch contains the current development version. To get a released version, check out the revision that’s tagged for that version. For example, to get version 7.1.1:

git checkout 7.1.1

Upgrade notes

The 7.x versions require C++17. However, it’s probably not a problem if your compiler does not implement C++17 fully. Initially the 7.x series will only require some basic C++17 features such as std::string_view. More advanced use may follow later.

Also, 7.0 makes some breaking changes in rarely used APIs:

There is just a single connection class. It connects immediately.
Custom connection classes are no longer supported.
Closed connections can no longer be reactivated.
The API for defining string conversions has changed.

And if you’re defining your own type conversions, *7.1 requires one additional field in your nullness traits.

Building libpqxx

There are two different ways of building libpqxx from the command line: 1. Using CMake, on any system which supports it. 2. On Unix-like systems, using a configure script.

“Unix-like” systems include GNU/Linux, Apple macOS and the BSD family, AIX, HP-UX, Irix, Solaris, etc. Even on Microsoft Windows, a Unix-like environment such as WSL, Cygwin, or MinGW should work.

You’ll find detailed build and install instructions in BUILDING-configure.md and BUILDING-cmake.md, respectively.

And if you’re working with Microsoft Visual Studio, have a look at Gordon Elliott’s Easy-PQXX Build for Windows Visual Studio project:

https://github.com/GordonLElliott/Easy-PQXX-Build-for-Windows-Visual-Studio

At the time of writing, June 2020, this is still in development and in need of testers and feedback.

Documentation

Building the library, if you have the right tools installed, generates HTML documentation in the doc/ directory. It is based on the headers in include/pqxx/ and text in include/pqxx/doc/. The documentation is also available online at readthedocs.org.

Programming with libpqxx

Your first program will involve the libpqxx classes “connection” (see the pqxx/connection.hxx header), and work (a convenience alias for transaction<> which conforms to the interface defined in pqxx/transaction_base.hxx).

These *.hxx headers are not the ones you include in your program. Instead, include the versions without filename suffix (e.g. pqxx/connection). Those will include the actual .hxx files for you. This was done so that includes are in standard C++ style (as in <iostream> etc.), but an editor will still recognize them as files containing C++ code.

Continuing the list of classes, you will most likely also need the result class (pqxx/result.hxx). In a nutshell, you create a connection based on a Postgres connection string (see below), create a work in the context of that connection, and run one or more queries on the work which return result objects. The results are containers of rows of data, each of which you can treat as an array of strings: one for each field in the row. It’s that simple.

Here is a simple example program to get you going, with full error handling:

#include <iostream>
#include <pqxx/pqxx>

int main()
{
    try
    {
        pqxx::connection C;
        std::cout << "Connected to " << C.dbname() << std::endl;
        pqxx::work W{C};

        pqxx::result R{W.exec("SELECT name FROM employee")};

        std::cout << "Found " << R.size() << "employees:\n";
        for (auto row: R)
            std::cout << row[0].c_str() << '\n';

        std::cout << "Doubling all employees' salaries...\n";
        W.exec0("UPDATE employee SET salary = salary*2");

        std::cout << "Making changes definite: ";
        W.commit();
        std::cout << "OK.\n";
    }
    catch (std::exception const &e)
    {
        std::cerr << e.what() << '\n';
        return 1;
    }
    return 0;
}

Connection strings

Postgres connection strings state which database server you wish to connect to, under which username, using which password, and so on. Their format is defined in the documentation for libpq, the C client interface for PostgreSQL. Alternatively, these values may be defined by setting certain environment variables as documented in e.g. the manual for psql, the command line interface to PostgreSQL. Again the definitions are the same for libpqxx-based programs.

The connection strings and variables are not fully and definitively documented here; this document will tell you just enough to get going. Check the PostgreSQL documentation for authoritative information.

The connection string consists of attribute=value pairs separated by spaces, e.g. “user=john password=1x2y3z4”. The valid attributes include:

host Name of server to connect to, or the full file path (beginning with a slash) to a Unix-domain socket on the local machine. Defaults to “/tmp”. Equivalent to (but overrides) environment variable PGHOST.
hostaddr IP address of a server to connect to; mutually exclusive with “host”.
port Port number at the server host to connect to, or socket file name extension for Unix-domain connections. Equivalent to (but overrides) environment variable PGPORT.
dbname Name of the database to connect to. A single server may host multiple databases. Defaults to the same name as the current user’s name. Equivalent to (but overrides) environment variable PGDATABASE.
user User name to connect under. This defaults to the name of the current user, although PostgreSQL users are not necessarily the same thing as system users.
requiressl If set to 1, demands an encrypted SSL connection (and fails if no SSL connection can be created).

Settings in the connection strings override the environment variables, which in turn override the default, on a variable-by-variable basis. You only need to define those variables that require non-default values.

Linking with libpqxx

To link your final program, make sure you link to both the C-level libpq library and the actual C++ library, libpqxx. With most Unix-style compilers, you’d do this using the options

	-lpqxx -lpq

while linking. Both libraries must be in your link path, so the linker knows where to find them. Any dynamic libraries you use must also be in a place where the loader can find them when loading your program at runtime.

Some users have reported problems using the above syntax, however, particularly when multiple versions of libpqxx are partially or incorrectly installed on the system. If you get massive link errors, try removing the “-lpqxx” argument from the command line and replacing it with the name of the libpqxx library binary instead. That’s typically libpqxx.a, but you’ll have to add the path to its location as well, e.g. /usr/local/pqxx/lib/libpqxx.a. This will ensure that the linker will use that exact version of the library rather than one found elsewhere on the system, and eliminate worries about the exact right version of the library being installed with your program..