These functions can be used to interrogate the status of an existing database connection object.
    
    
    libpq application programmers should be careful to
    maintain the PGconn abstraction.  Use the accessor
    functions described below to get at the contents of PGconn.
    Reference to internal PGconn fields using
    libpq-int.h is not recommended because they are subject to change
    in the future.
   
   The following functions return parameter values established at connection.
   These values are fixed for the life of the connection.  If a multi-host
   connection string is used, the values of PQhost,
   PQport, and PQpass can change if a new connection
   is established using the same PGconn object.  Other values
   are fixed for the lifetime of the PGconn object.
   
PQdb
      
     Returns the database name of the connection.
char *PQdb(const PGconn *conn);
PQuser
      
     Returns the user name of the connection.
char *PQuser(const PGconn *conn);
PQpass
      
     Returns the password of the connection.
char *PQpass(const PGconn *conn);
       PQpass will return either the password specified
       in the connection parameters, or if there was none and the password
       was obtained from the password
       file, it will return that.  In the latter case,
       if multiple hosts were specified in the connection parameters, it is
       not possible to rely on the result of PQpass until
       the connection is established.  The status of the connection can be
       checked using the function PQstatus.
      
PQhost
      
            Returns the server host name of the active connection.
       This can be a host name, an IP address, or a directory path if the
       connection is via Unix socket.  (The path case can be distinguished
       because it will always be an absolute path, beginning
       with /.)
char *PQhost(const PGconn *conn);
       If the connection parameters specified both host and
       hostaddr, then PQhost will
       return the host information.  If only
       hostaddr was specified, then that is returned.
       If multiple hosts were specified in the connection parameters,
       PQhost returns the host actually connected to.
      
       PQhost returns NULL if the
       conn argument is NULL.
       Otherwise, if there is an error producing the host information (perhaps
       if the connection has not been fully established or there was an
       error), it returns an empty string.
      
       If multiple hosts were specified in the connection parameters, it is
       not possible to rely on the result of PQhost until
       the connection is established.  The status of the connection can be
       checked using the function PQstatus.
      
PQport
      
     Returns the port of the active connection.
char *PQport(const PGconn *conn);
       If multiple ports were specified in the connection parameters,
       PQport returns the port actually connected to.
      
       PQport returns NULL if the
       conn argument is NULL.
       Otherwise, if there is an error producing the port information (perhaps
       if the connection has not been fully established or there was an
       error), it returns an empty string.
      
       If multiple ports were specified in the connection parameters, it is
       not possible to rely on the result of PQport until
       the connection is established.  The status of the connection can be
       checked using the function PQstatus.
      
PQtty
      
     Returns the debug TTY of the connection. (This is obsolete, since the server no longer pays attention to the TTY setting, but the function remains for backward compatibility.)
char *PQtty(const PGconn *conn);
PQoptions
      
     Returns the command-line options passed in the connection request.
char *PQoptions(const PGconn *conn);
   The following functions return status data that can change as operations
   are executed on the PGconn object.
   
PQstatus
      
     Returns the status of the connection.
ConnStatusType PQstatus(const PGconn *conn);
       The status can be one of a number of values.  However, only two of
       these are seen outside of an asynchronous connection procedure:
       CONNECTION_OK and
       CONNECTION_BAD. A good connection to the database
       has the status CONNECTION_OK.  A failed
       connection attempt is signaled by status
       CONNECTION_BAD.  Ordinarily, an OK status will
       remain so until PQfinish, but a communications
       failure might result in the status changing to
       CONNECTION_BAD prematurely.  In that case the
       application could try to recover by calling
       PQreset.
      
       See the entry for PQconnectStartParams, PQconnectStart
       and PQconnectPoll with regards to other status codes that
       might be returned.
      
PQtransactionStatus
      
     Returns the current in-transaction status of the server.
PGTransactionStatusType PQtransactionStatus(const PGconn *conn);
       The status can be PQTRANS_IDLE (currently idle),
       PQTRANS_ACTIVE (a command is in progress),
       PQTRANS_INTRANS (idle, in a valid transaction block),
       or PQTRANS_INERROR (idle, in a failed transaction block).
       PQTRANS_UNKNOWN is reported if the connection is bad.
       PQTRANS_ACTIVE is reported only when a query
       has been sent to the server and not yet completed.
      
PQparameterStatus
      
     Looks up a current parameter setting of the server.
const char *PQparameterStatus(const PGconn *conn, const char *paramName);
       Certain parameter values are reported by the server automatically at
       connection startup or whenever their values change.
       PQparameterStatus can be used to interrogate these settings.
       It returns the current value of a parameter if known, or NULL
       if the parameter is not known.
      
       Parameters reported as of the current release include
       server_version,
       server_encoding,
       client_encoding,
       application_name,
       is_superuser,
       session_authorization,
       DateStyle,
       IntervalStyle,
       TimeZone,
       integer_datetimes, and
       standard_conforming_strings.
       (server_encoding, TimeZone, and
       integer_datetimes were not reported by releases before 8.0;
       standard_conforming_strings was not reported by releases
       before 8.1;
       IntervalStyle was not reported by releases before 8.4;
       application_name was not reported by releases before 9.0.)
       Note that
       server_version,
       server_encoding and
       integer_datetimes
       cannot change after startup.
      
       Pre-3.0-protocol servers do not report parameter settings, but
       libpq includes logic to obtain values for
       server_version and client_encoding anyway.
       Applications are encouraged to use PQparameterStatus
       rather than ad hoc code to determine these values.
       (Beware however that on a pre-3.0 connection, changing
       client_encoding via SET after connection
       startup will not be reflected by PQparameterStatus.)
       For server_version, see also
       PQserverVersion, which returns the information in a
       numeric form that is much easier to compare against.
      
       If no value for standard_conforming_strings is reported,
       applications can assume it is off, that is, backslashes
       are treated as escapes in string literals.  Also, the presence of
       this parameter can be taken as an indication that the escape string
       syntax (E'...') is accepted.
      
       Although the returned pointer is declared const, it in fact
       points to mutable storage associated with the PGconn structure.
       It is unwise to assume the pointer will remain valid across queries.
      
PQprotocolVersion
      
     Interrogates the frontend/backend protocol being used.
int PQprotocolVersion(const PGconn *conn);
Applications might wish to use this function to determine whether certain features are supported. Currently, the possible values are 2 (2.0 protocol), 3 (3.0 protocol), or zero (connection bad). The protocol version will not change after connection startup is complete, but it could theoretically change during a connection reset. The 3.0 protocol will normally be used when communicating with PostgreSQL 7.4 or later servers; pre-7.4 servers support only protocol 2.0. (Protocol 1.0 is obsolete and not supported by libpq.)
PQserverVersion
      
     Returns an integer representing the server version.
int PQserverVersion(const PGconn *conn);
Applications might use this function to determine the version of the database server they are connected to. The result is formed by multiplying the server's major version number by 10000 and adding the minor version number. For example, version 10.1 will be returned as 100001, and version 11.0 will be returned as 110000. Zero is returned if the connection is bad.
       Prior to major version 10, PostgreSQL used
       three-part version numbers in which the first two parts together
       represented the major version.  For those
       versions, PQserverVersion uses two digits for each
       part; for example version 9.1.5 will be returned as 90105, and
       version 9.2.0 will be returned as 90200.
      
       Therefore, for purposes of determining feature compatibility,
       applications should divide the result of PQserverVersion
       by 100 not 10000 to determine a logical major version number.
       In all release series, only the last two digits differ between
       minor releases (bug-fix releases).
      
PQerrorMessage
      
     Returns the error message most recently generated by an operation on the connection.
char *PQerrorMessage(const PGconn *conn);
       Nearly all libpq functions will set a message for
       PQerrorMessage if they fail.  Note that by
       libpq convention, a nonempty
       PQerrorMessage result can consist of multiple lines,
       and will include a trailing newline. The caller should not free
       the result directly. It will be freed when the associated
       PGconn handle is passed to
       PQfinish.  The result string should not be
       expected to remain the same across operations on the
       PGconn structure.
      
PQsocketObtains the file descriptor number of the connection socket to the server. A valid descriptor will be greater than or equal to 0; a result of -1 indicates that no server connection is currently open. (This will not change during normal operation, but could change during connection setup or reset.)
int PQsocket(const PGconn *conn);
PQbackendPIDReturns the process ID (PID) of the backend process handling this connection.
int PQbackendPID(const PGconn *conn);
       The backend PID is useful for debugging
       purposes and for comparison to NOTIFY
       messages (which include the PID of the
       notifying backend process).  Note that the
       PID belongs to a process executing on the
       database server host, not the local host!
      
PQconnectionNeedsPasswordReturns true (1) if the connection authentication method required a password, but none was available. Returns false (0) if not.
int PQconnectionNeedsPassword(const PGconn *conn);
This function can be applied after a failed connection attempt to decide whether to prompt the user for a password.
PQconnectionUsedPasswordReturns true (1) if the connection authentication method used a password. Returns false (0) if not.
int PQconnectionUsedPassword(const PGconn *conn);
This function can be applied after either a failed or successful connection attempt to detect whether the server demanded a password.
The following functions return information related to SSL. This information usually doesn't change after a connection is established.
PQsslInUseReturns true (1) if the connection uses SSL, false (0) if not.
int PQsslInUse(const PGconn *conn);
PQsslAttributeReturns SSL-related information about the connection.
const char *PQsslAttribute(const PGconn *conn, const char *attribute_name);
The list of available attributes varies depending on the SSL library being used, and the type of connection. If an attribute is not available, returns NULL.
The following attributes are commonly available:
library            Name of the SSL implementation in use. (Currently, only
            "OpenSSL" is implemented)
           
protocol             SSL/TLS version in use. Common values
             are "TLSv1", "TLSv1.1"
             and "TLSv1.2", but an implementation may
             return other strings if some other protocol is used.
           
key_bitsNumber of key bits used by the encryption algorithm.
cipher            A short name of the ciphersuite used, e.g.,
            "DHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA". The names are specific
            to each SSL implementation.
           
compressionReturns "on" if SSL compression is in use, else it returns "off".
PQsslAttributeNamesReturn an array of SSL attribute names available. The array is terminated by a NULL pointer.
const char * const * PQsslAttributeNames(const PGconn *conn);
PQsslStructReturn a pointer to an SSL-implementation-specific object describing the connection.
void *PQsslStruct(const PGconn *conn, const char *struct_name);
       The struct(s) available depend on the SSL implementation in use.
       For OpenSSL, there is one struct, available under the name "OpenSSL",
       and it returns a pointer to the OpenSSL SSL struct.
       To use this function, code along the following lines could be used:
#include <libpq-fe.h>
#include <openssl/ssl.h>
...
    SSL *ssl;
    dbconn = PQconnectdb(...);
    ...
    ssl = PQsslStruct(dbconn, "OpenSSL");
    if (ssl)
    {
        /* use OpenSSL functions to access ssl */
    }
This structure can be used to verify encryption levels, check server certificates, and more. Refer to the OpenSSL documentation for information about this structure.
PQgetsslReturns the SSL structure used in the connection, or null if SSL is not in use.
void *PQgetssl(const PGconn *conn);
       This function is equivalent to PQsslStruct(conn, "OpenSSL"). It should
       not be used in new applications, because the returned struct is
       specific to OpenSSL and will not be available if another SSL
       implementation is used. To check if a connection uses SSL, call
       PQsslInUse instead, and for more details about the
       connection, use PQsslAttribute.