FOR statement
Applies to ❌ Open Source Edition ✅ Express Edition ✅ Professional Edition ✅ Enterprise Edition
When iterating over a sequence of numeric values, the FOR loop provides useful syntax sugar over the previous types of loops, including the WHILE loop, despite being functional equivalent.
An example:
-- PL/SQL FOR i IN 1 .. 10 LOOP INSERT INTO t (col) VALUES (i); END LOOP;
// All dialects
Variable<Integer> i = var("i", INTEGER);
for_(i).in(1, 10).loop(
insertInto(T).columns(T.COL).values(i)
)
In addition to simplifying the most common case, there are also options of traversing the arguments in a reversed way, and using an additional optional step variable, for example:
-- pgplsql FOR i IN REVERSE 10 .. 1 BY 2 LOOP INSERT INTO t (col) VALUES (i); END LOOP;
// All dialects
Variable<Integer> i = var("i", INTEGER);
for_(i).inReverse(10, 1).by(2).loop(
insertInto(T).columns(T.COL).values(i)
)
Not all dialects support the entirety of this syntax, but luckily it is easy for jOOQ to emulate in all dialects using WHILE:
-- PL/SQL WHILE i >= 1 LOOP INSERT INTO t (col) VALUES (i); i := i - 2; END LOOP;
Notice that for is a reserved keyword in the Java language, so the jOOQ API cannot use it as a method name. We've suffixed such conflicts with an underscore: for_().
Feedback
Do you have any feedback about this page? We'd love to hear it!