PostgreSQL - Create view if not exist

In this article, we would like to show you how to create a view if it doesn't already exist in PostgreSQL.

Quick solution:

CREATE VIEW IF NOT EXISTS "view_name" AS
SELECT "column1", "column2", ...
FROM "table_name"
WHERE condition;

Practical example

To show how the CREATE VIEW IF NOT EXIST statement works, we will use the following table:

Note:

At the end of this article you can find database preparation SQL queries.

Example

In this example, we will create a view that shows all users from Spain if it doesn't already exist.

Query:

CREATE VIEW IF NOT EXISTS "Spain Users" AS
SELECT "name", "email"
FROM "users"
WHERE "country" = 'Spain';

To see the view created with the query above simply use:

SELECT * FROM "Spain Users";

Result:

Database preparation

create_tables.sql file:

CREATE TABLE "users" (
	"id" SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
	"name" VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
	"email" VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
	"country" VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL
);

insert_data.sql file:

INSERT INTO "users"
	("name", "email", "country")
VALUES
	('Tom', 'tom01@email.com', 'Poland'),
	('Chris','chris123@email.com', 'Spain'),
	('Jack','jack32@email.com', 'Spain'),
    ('Kim','kim103@email.com', 'Vietnam'),
    ('Marco','marco942@email.com', 'Italy'),
	('Kate','kate227@email.com', 'Spain'),
	('Nam','nam393@email.com', 'Vietnam');