less psql, more emacs

Question

I was listening to this song today - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajy71xw351E Don't Wanna Leave You Now

and I realized how much I don't want to leave emacs.

I often do this after backgrounding (C-z) emacs,

psql datababase_name

select id from table1;

update table set foo="baa" where id=n;

I also often open up a gui sql browser (such as Navicat) and order tables by a column. I might also do LIMIT to speed up query time. Sometimes, I delete rows in a table by pressing x in the gui browser.

With Navicat, I like double clicking on a cell to edit a Postgres row in-place.

I know I will never fully replace Navicat, but how can I use emacs to do basic (Postgres) database work?

Answer 1

Emacs has in-built support for many databases, including Postgres.

M-x sql-postgres RET

Answer 2

In addition to offby1's answer (which is what you were asking for) also take note of:

• https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategorySql which covers sql-mode and sql-interactive-mode in general.

• https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SqlQueryBuffer which has some tips on linking a sql-mode buffer to a sql-interactive-mode buffer (which is the super-useful feature it hadn't even occurred to you to ask for).

• https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/PostgreSQL which covers various different interfaces and items specific to postgres, which wasn't what you were asking for, but may be of interest regardless.