PostgreSQL: insert from another table

Question

You can supply literal values in the SELECT:

INSERT INTO TABLE1 (id, col_1, col_2, col_3)
SELECT id, 'data1', 'data2', 'data3'
FROM TABLE2
WHERE col_a = 'something';

A select list can contain any value expression:

But the expressions in the select list do not have to reference any columns in the table expression of the FROM clause; they can be constant arithmetic expressions, for instance.

And a string literal is certainly a value expression.

For referential integtity :

insert into  main_tbl (col1, ref1, ref2, createdby)
values ('col1_val',
        (select ref1 from ref1_tbl where lookup_val = 'lookup1'),
        (select ref2 from ref2_tbl where lookup_val = 'lookup2'),
        'init-load'
       );

Very late answer, but I think my answer is more straight forward for specific use cases where users want to simply insert (copy) data from table A into table B:

INSERT INTO table_b (col1, col2, col3, col4, col5, col6)
SELECT col1, 'str_val', int_val, col4, col5, col6
FROM table_a

You could use coalesce:

insert into destination select coalesce(field1,'somedata'),... from source;