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Introduction
Side-effects in functions
Invoking functions

Instruction

Great! Let's wrap up the INTO syntax with some additional info. This syntax allows us to get a result from INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statements. Take a look:

UPDATE post INTO score 
SET thumbs_down = thumbs_down + 1
WHERE id = post_id
RETURNING thumbs_down;

There are two things happening here: a regular update (which adds a downvote to a given post), and an assignment.

UPDATE (like both INSERT and DELETE) in PostgreSQL has an optional RETURNING clause that allows it to return a result from this statement. Here, we return the number of downvotes after the update. You can use the INTO variable syntax to store this result in a variable.

Exercise

Let's take a break from writing functions. Just play around with RETURNING clause. Click I'm done. Next exercise whenever you're ready.

Pssst... You may return many columns, or even all of them (*) – it works just like SELECT 😉