Create a Custom SQL Enum Type

Instructor: [0:00] Data integrity is something you should always have in mind. It just makes writing and debugging queries so much easier. We ensure integrity by adding constraints to our tables like NOT NULL, UNIQUE, adding primary keys, and also using the correct types for our columns.

[0:16] One powerful feature of SQL is the ability to add custom types. Let's write CREATE TYPE user status as ENUM, then we're going to give it three string values -- member, instructor, and developer. Once you've run this, you'll see it is as CREATE TYPE.

[0:32] Let's break this down. We're creating a custom type and calling it user status. Next up, we're defining the data type of this custom type. Here, we're using an ENUM. There are other custom data types you can create with composites, enumerated, range, base, and array.

[0:49] We can spend an hour going over this, but for this video we're just going to stick to using ENUMs. For the ENUM values we want to use, we're going to pass those through here as strings. We only want to use members, instructors, and developers.

[1:02] Let's think of our product like egghead.io. We need to differentiate users. Especially when they access the page we need to know if they're a member, instructor, or developer.

[1:12] Looking at our users table again, we've got four columns here -- user handle, first name, last name, and email. Let's go ahead and add another column to this table that's going to have the ENUM that we just created.

[1:25] We'll call that column the status and it's going to have the user status. By default it's going to be NULL because we're not giving it any value. You see that Lucy Smith doesn't have a status.

[1:35] We can easily do this by just updated her row. Let's say update users. Set status equal to instructor where her first name is equal to Lucy. Now we go and try and find her again we'll see that we successfully updated her status to an instructor.

[1:53] Now, if you're like me and a terrible speller, this ENUM is going to save us from misspelling. If we misspell instructor, we're going to see an arrow thrown that's going to catch it and save us, thus helping our data integrity of our table.

[2:07] To review, creating custom types is super easy. The syntax is just CREATE TYPE. Then you're going to give it a name of this new type and then you're going to define the data type that you want your custom type to reference.

[2:20] In our case we used an ENUM so it took open and closed prints. Again, check the notes of this video for other options for other SQL languages and other data types you can use when creating custom types.