TO_CAMEL_CASE

Convert the input string to lowerCamelCase.

Category: miscReturns: STRINGDialect: PostgreSql

Syntax

TO_CAMEL_CASE(str)

Description

## Overview Converts the input string to lowerCamelCase. Word boundaries are detected at spaces, underscores, and hyphens; each boundary is removed, the next character is uppercased, and the first character of the result is lowercased. Use this function to transform SQL-style identifiers into JavaScript/JSON-friendly names. ## Behavior - Returns NULL if the input is NULL. - Empty input returns an empty string. - Single-word input is returned lowercased. - Non-letter boundary characters (spaces, underscores, hyphens) are removed. - Existing camel-case input is preserved: internal uppercase letters remain uppercase. - Deterministic and side effect free. ## Compatibility - Matches the PG-compat TO_CAMEL_CASE semantics.

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
`str`		Specifies the input string. Separators recognized for word splitting are spaces, underscores, and hyphens.

Examples

-- Space-separated words
SELECT TO_CAMEL_CASE('hello world');  -- 'helloWorld'

-- From snake_case
SELECT TO_CAMEL_CASE('first_name');  -- 'firstName'

-- From kebab-case
SELECT TO_CAMEL_CASE('background-color');  -- 'backgroundColor'

-- Emit JSON-friendly keys from DB column names
SELECT TO_CAMEL_CASE(column_name) AS json_key
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name = 'orders';

-- NULL propagation
SELECT TO_CAMEL_CASE(NULL);  -- NULL

Pitfalls

The function recognizes only space, underscore, and hyphen as word boundaries. Dots, slashes, and other punctuation are not split; normalize upstream if you need them to be.
Internal uppercase letters are preserved. `TO_CAMEL_CASE('XMLParser')` returns `xMLParser`, not `xmlParser`. Apply LOWER first if you want full normalization.
Unicode letters are treated as letters for casing but are not split into words. Non-Latin scripts may not camel-case cleanly; consider SLUGIFY for URL use.
The function returns lowerCamelCase, not UpperCamelCase (PascalCase). Wrap in INITCAP or use a custom UDF if you need the first letter uppercased.