Doing a WHERE IN on multiple columns in Postgresql

Question

I have a table 'answers' with an indexed 'problem_id' integer column, a 'times_chosen' integer column, and an 'option' column that's a varchar. Currently the only values for the 'option' column are 'A', 'B', 'C' and 'D', though those may expand later on. I want to increment by one the 'times_chosen' values of many (50-100) answers, when I know the problem_id and option of each of them.

So I need a query that's something like:

UPDATE answers SET times_chosen = times_chosen + 1 WHERE (problem_id, option) IN ((4509, 'B'), (622, 'C'), (1066, 'D'), (4059, 'A'), (4740, 'A')...) 

Is this possible?

Answer 1

You can join against a virtual table of sorts:

SELECT * FROM answers JOIN (VALUES (4509, 'B'), (622, 'C'), (1066, 'D'), (4059, 'A'), (4740, 'A'))      AS t (p,o) ON p = problem_id AND o = option 

You can do something similar with UPDATE.