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18.2.2.2 UDF Calling Sequences for Aggregate Functions »
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18.2.2.1. UDF Calling Sequences for Simple Functions

This section describes the different functions that you need to define when you create a simple UDF. Section 18.2.2, “Adding a New User-Defined Function”, describes the order in which MySQL calls these functions.

The main xxx() function should be declared as shown in this section. Note that the return type and parameters differ, depending on whether you declare the SQL function XXX() to return STRING, INTEGER, or REAL in the CREATE FUNCTION statement:

For STRING functions: 

char *xxx(UDF_INIT *initid, UDF_ARGS *args,
          char *result, unsigned long *length,
          char *is_null, char *error);

For INTEGER functions: 

long long xxx(UDF_INIT *initid, UDF_ARGS *args,
              char *is_null, char *error);

For REAL functions: 

double xxx(UDF_INIT *initid, UDF_ARGS *args,
              char *is_null, char *error);

The initialization and deinitialization functions are declared like this: 

my_bool xxx_init(UDF_INIT *initid, UDF_ARGS *args, char *message);

void xxx_deinit(UDF_INIT *initid);

The initid parameter is passed to all three functions. It points to a UDF_INIT structure that is used to communicate information between functions. The UDF_INIT structure members follow. The initialization function should fill in any members that it wishes to change. (To use the default for a member, leave it unchanged.)

  • my_bool maybe_null

    xxx_init() should set maybe_null to 1 if xxx() can return NULL. The default value is 1 if any of the arguments are declared maybe_null.

  • unsigned int decimals

    The number of decimal digits to the right of the decimal point. The default value is the maximum number of decimal digits in the arguments passed to the main function. For example, if the function is passed 1.34, 1.345, and 1.3, the default would be 3, because 1.345 has 3 decimal digits.

    For arguments that have no fixed number of decimals, the decimals value is set to 31, which is 1 more than the maximum number of decimals allowed for the DECIMAL, FLOAT, and DOUBLE data types.

    A decimals value of 31 is used for arguments in cases such as a FLOAT or DOUBLE column declared without an explicit number of decimals (for example, FLOAT rather than FLOAT(10,3)) and for floating-point constants such as 1345E-3. It is also used for string and other nonnumber arguments that might be converted within the function to numeric form.

    The value to which the decimals member is initialized is only a default. It can be changed within the function to reflect the actual calculation performed. The default is determined such that the largest number of decimals of the arguments is used. If the number of decimals is 31 for even one of the arguments, that is the value used for decimals.

  • unsigned int max_length

    The maximum length of the result. The default max_length value differs depending on the result type of the function. For string functions, the default is the length of the longest argument. For integer functions, the default is 21 digits. For real functions, the default is 13 plus the number of decimal digits indicated by initid->decimals. (For numeric functions, the length includes any sign or decimal point characters.)

    If you want to return a blob value, you can set max_length to 65KB or 16MB. This memory is not allocated, but the value is used to decide which data type to use if there is a need to temporarily store the data.

  • char *ptr

    A pointer that the function can use for its own purposes. For example, functions can use initid->ptr to communicate allocated memory among themselves. xxx_init() should allocate the memory and assign it to this pointer: 

    initid->ptr = allocated_memory;

    In xxx() and xxx_deinit(), refer to initid->ptr to use or deallocate the memory.