how to emulate "insert ignore" and "on duplicate key update" (sql merge) with postgresql?

Question

With PostgreSQL 9.5, this is now native functionality (like MySQL has had for several years):

INSERT ... ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING/UPDATE ("UPSERT")

9.5 brings support for "UPSERT" operations. INSERT is extended to accept an ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE/IGNORE clause. This clause specifies an alternative action to take in the event of a would-be duplicate violation.

...

Further example of new syntax:

INSERT INTO user_logins (username, logins)
VALUES ('Naomi',1),('James',1) 
ON CONFLICT (username)
DO UPDATE SET logins = user_logins.logins + EXCLUDED.logins;

Edit: in case you missed warren's answer, PG9.5 now has this natively; time to upgrade!

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Building on Bill Karwin's answer, to spell out what a rule based approach would look like (transferring from another schema in the same DB, and with a multi-column primary key):

CREATE RULE "my_table_on_duplicate_ignore" AS ON INSERT TO "my_table"
  WHERE EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM my_table 
                WHERE (pk_col_1, pk_col_2)=(NEW.pk_col_1, NEW.pk_col_2))
  DO INSTEAD NOTHING;
INSERT INTO my_table SELECT * FROM another_schema.my_table WHERE some_cond;
DROP RULE "my_table_on_duplicate_ignore" ON "my_table";

Note: The rule applies to all INSERT operations until the rule is dropped, so not quite ad hoc.

For those of you that have Postgres 9.5 or higher, the new ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING syntax should work:

INSERT INTO target_table (field_one, field_two, field_three ) 
SELECT field_one, field_two, field_three
FROM source_table
ON CONFLICT (field_one) DO NOTHING;

For those of us who have an earlier version, this right join will work instead:

INSERT INTO target_table (field_one, field_two, field_three )
SELECT source_table.field_one, source_table.field_two, source_table.field_three
FROM source_table 
LEFT JOIN target_table ON source_table.field_one = target_table.field_one
WHERE target_table.field_one IS NULL;

Try to do an UPDATE. If it doesn't modify any row that means it didn't exist, so do an insert. Obviously, you do this inside a transaction.

You can of course wrap this in a function if you don't want to put the extra code on the client side. You also need a loop for the very rare race condition in that thinking.

There's an example of this in the documentation: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/plpgsql-control-structures.html, example 40-2 right at the bottom.

That's usually the easiest way. You can do some magic with rules, but it's likely going to be a lot messier. I'd recommend the wrap-in-function approach over that any day.

This works for single row, or few row, values. If you're dealing with large amounts of rows for example from a subquery, you're best of splitting it into two queries, one for INSERT and one for UPDATE (as an appropriate join/subselect of course - no need to write your main filter twice)

To get the insert ignore logic you can do something like below. I found simply inserting from a select statement of literal values worked best, then you can mask out the duplicate keys with a NOT EXISTS clause. To get the update on duplicate logic I suspect a pl/pgsql loop would be necessary.

INSERT INTO manager.vin_manufacturer
(SELECT * FROM( VALUES
  ('935',' Citroën Brazil','Citroën'),
  ('ABC', 'Toyota', 'Toyota'),
  ('ZOM',' OM','OM')
  ) as tmp (vin_manufacturer_id, manufacturer_desc, make_desc)
  WHERE NOT EXISTS (
    --ignore anything that has already been inserted
    SELECT 1 FROM manager.vin_manufacturer m where m.vin_manufacturer_id = tmp.vin_manufacturer_id)
)

INSERT INTO mytable(col1,col2) 
    SELECT 'val1','val2' 
    WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM mytable WHERE col1='val1')