CREATE TABLE AS with PRIMARY KEY in one statement (PostgreSQL)

Is there a way to set the PRIMARY KEY in a single "CREATE TABLE AS" statement?

Example - I would like the following to be written in 1 statement rather than 2:

 CREATE TABLE "new_table_name" AS SELECT a.uniquekey, a.some_value + b.some_value FROM "table_a" AS a, "table_b" AS b WHERE a.uniquekey=b.uniquekey;
 ALTER TABLE "new_table_name" ADD PRIMARY KEY (uniquekey);

Is there a better way of doing this in general (assume there are more than 2 tables, e.g. 10)?


According to the manual: create table and create table as you can either:

  • create table with primary key first, and use select into later
  • create table as first, and use add primary key later

But not both create table as with primary key - what you wanted.


If you want to create a new table with the same table structure of another table, you can do this in one statement (both creating a new table and setting the primary key) like this:

create table mytable_clone (like mytable including defaults including constraints including indexes);

No, there is no shorter way to create the table and the primary key.


See the command below, it will create a new table with all the constraints and with no data. Worked in postgres 9.5

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS <ClonedTableName>(like <OriginalTableName> including all)