"invalid reference to FROM-clause entry for table" in Postgres query
Explanation for the error
The immediate cause for the error message is that any explicit JOIN
binds stronger than a comma (,
) which is otherwise equivalent to a CROSS JOIN
, but (per documentation):
Note: This latter equivalence does not hold exactly when more than twotables appear, because
JOIN
binds more tightly than comma. For exampleFROM T1 CROSS JOIN T2 INNER JOIN T3 ON condition
is not the same asFROM T1, T2 INNER JOIN T3 ON condition
because thecondition
canreferenceT1
in the first case but not the second.
Bold emphasis mine.
This is the cause of your error. You could fix it:
FROM appointment_intakesCROSS JOIN LATERAL jsonb_object_keys(data #> '{products}') keysINNER JOIN appointment_intake_users ON ...
But that was not the only problem. Keep reading.
One might argue that Postgres should see that LATERAL
only makes sense in connection with the table to the left. But that's not so.
Assumption
I added table aliases, and table-qualified all column names as suspected. While being at it, I simplified the JSON references and trimmed some noise.This query is still incorrect:
SELECT i.data ->> 'id' AS id, i.data ->> 'name' AS name, i.data ->> 'curator' AS curator, i.data -> '$isValid' AS "$isValid", i.data -> 'customer' AS customer, i.data -> '$createdTS' AS "$createdTS", i.data -> '$updatedTS' AS "$updatedTS", i.data -> '$isComplete' AS "$isComplete", count(k.keys)::numeric AS "numProducts", u.created_atFROM appointment_intakes i , jsonb_object_keys(i.data -> 'products') AS k(keys)JOIN appointment_intake_users u ON u.appointment_intake_id = i.id#{where_clause}GROUP BY i.id
Raw query
Based on the above and some more assumptions, the solution could be to do the count in a subquery:
SELECT i.data ->> 'id' AS id, i.data ->> 'name' AS name, i.data ->> 'curator' AS curator, i.data -> '$isValid' AS "$isValid", i.data -> 'customer' AS customer, i.data -> '$createdTS' AS "$createdTS", i.data -> '$updatedTS' AS "$updatedTS", i.data -> '$isComplete' AS "$isComplete", (SELECT count(*)::numeric FROM jsonb_object_keys(i.data -> 'products')) AS "numProducts", min(u.created_at) AS created_atFROM appointment_intakes iJOIN appointment_intake_users u ON u.appointment_intake_id = i.id-- #{where_clause}GROUP BY i.id;
Since you only need the count, I converted your LATERAL
join into a correlated subquery, thereby avoiding the various problems arising from multiple 1:n joins combined. More:
- What is the difference between LATERAL JOIN and a subquery in PostgreSQL?
- Two SQL LEFT JOINS produce incorrect result
You need to escape identifiers properly, use a prepared statement and pass values as values. Don't concatenate values into the query string. That's an invitation for random errors or SQL injection attacks. Recent example for PHP: