How to SELECT * and rename a column?

Question

I can easily select all my columns from a table with:

SELECT * FROM foo

But if I want to rename the column bar in foobar, I need to specify all the fields manually. This make my query not robust if a new column is added to the table:

SELECT a,b,c,d,bar AS foobar FROM foo

Is there a possibility to write something like

SELECT *, bar AS foobar from foo

Answer 1

Yes you can do the following:

SELECT  bar AS foobar, a.* from foo as a;

But in this case you will get bar twice: one with name foobar and other with bar as * fetched it..

Answer 2

There's not really a great way to get at what you're after. Typically, best practices dictate that you should avoid SELECT * ... for performance reasons. Especially for the reason you just specified - say you add a large field to this table that is irrelevant to the query at hand. You're still retrieving the data with a "*" whether you need it or not.

As for your query, you can do SELECT *, bar AS foobar from foo - but you'll be duplicating your results, as you'll return the original column by name as well as a column with your new alias.

Hope this helps!