How to check if a postgres user exists?

Question

createuser allows creation of a user (ROLE) in PostgreSQL. Is there a simple way to check if that user(name) exists already? Otherwise createuser returns with an error:

createuser: creation of new role failed: ERROR:  role "USR_NAME" already exists

UPDATE: The solution should be executable from shell preferrably, so that it's easier to automate inside a script.

Answer 1

psql -qtA -c "\du USR_NAME" | cut -d "|" -f 1

[[ -n $(psql -qtA -c "\du ${1}" | cut -d "|" -f 1) ]] && echo "exists" || echo "does not exist"

Answer 2

SELECT 1 FROM pg_roles WHERE rolname='USR_NAME'

And in terms of command line (thanks to Erwin):

psql postgres -tAc "SELECT 1 FROM pg_roles WHERE rolname='USR_NAME'"

Yields 1 if found and nothing else.

That is:

psql postgres -tAc "SELECT 1 FROM pg_roles WHERE rolname='USR_NAME'" | grep -q 1 || createuser ...

Answer 3

Following the same idea than to check if a db exists

psql -t -c '\du' | cut -d \| -f 1 | grep -qw <user_to_check>

and you can use it in a script like this:

if psql -t -c '\du' | cut -d \| -f 1 | grep -qw <user_to_check>; then
    # user exists
    # $? is 0
else
    # ruh-roh
    # $? is 1
fi

Answer 4

Hope this helps those of you who might be doing this in python.
I created a complete working script/solution on a GitHubGist--see URL below this code snippet.

# ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8546759/how-to-check-if-a-postgres-user-exists
check_user_cmd = ("SELECT 1 FROM pg_roles WHERE rolname='%s'" % (deis_app_user))

# our create role/user command and vars
create_user_cmd = ("CREATE ROLE %s WITH LOGIN CREATEDB PASSWORD '%s'" % (deis_app_user, deis_app_passwd))

# ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37488175/simplify-database-psycopg2-usage-by-creating-a-module
class RdsCreds():
    def __init__(self):
        self.conn = psycopg2.connect("dbname=%s user=%s host=%s password=%s" % (admin_db_name, admin_db_user, db_host, admin_db_pass))
        self.conn.set_isolation_level(0)
        self.cur = self.conn.cursor()

    def query(self, query):
        self.cur.execute(query)
        return self.cur.rowcount > 0

    def close(self):
        self.cur.close()
        self.conn.close()

db = RdsCreds()
user_exists = db.query(check_user_cmd)

# PostgreSQL currently has no 'create role if not exists'
# So, we only want to create the role/user if not exists 
if (user_exists) is True:
    print("%s user_exists: %s" % (deis_app_user, user_exists))
    print("Idempotent: No credential modifications required. Exiting...")
    db.close()
else:
    print("%s user_exists: %s" % (deis_app_user, user_exists))
    print("Creating %s user now" % (deis_app_user))
    db.query(create_user_cmd)
    user_exists = db.query(check_user_cmd)
    db.close()
    print("%s user_exists: %s" % (deis_app_user, user_exists))

Provides idempotent remote (RDS) PostgreSQL create role/user from python without CM modules, etc.