Searching a whole postgres db for a string
You could probably create a procedure to this, but out of the top of my head I'd just do a database dump (pg_dump) and search the file.
--Iterates through all the tables in the database
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION TablesCount(_searchText TEXT)
RETURNS text AS
$$ -- here start procedural part
DECLARE _tname text;
DECLARE cnt int;
BEGIN
FOR _tname IN SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables where table_schema='public' and table_type='BASE TABLE' LOOP
cnt= getMatchingCount(_tname,Columnames(_tname,_searchText));
RAISE NOTICE 'Count% ', CONCAT(' ',cnt,' Table name: ', _tname);
END LOOP;
RETURN _tname;
END;
$$ -- here finish procedural part
LANGUAGE plpgsql; -- language specification
-- Returns the count of tables for which the condition is met.
-- For example, if the intended text exists in any of the fields of the table,
-- then the count will be greater than 0. We can find the notifications
-- in the Messages section of the result viewer in postgres database.
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION getMatchingCount(_tname TEXT, _clause TEXT)
RETURNS int AS
$$
Declare outpt text;
BEGIN
EXECUTE 'Select Count(*) from '||_tname||' where '|| _clause
INTO outpt;
RETURN outpt;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
--Get the fields of each table. Builds the where clause with all columns of a table.
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION Columnames(_tname text,st text)
RETURNS text AS
$$ -- here start procedural part
DECLARE
_name text;
_helper text;
BEGIN
FOR _name IN SELECT column_name FROM information_schema.Columns WHERE table_name =_tname LOOP
_name=CONCAT('CAST('",_name,'" as VarChar)',' like ','''%',st,'%''', ' OR ');
_helper= CONCAT(_helper,_name,' ');
END LOOP;
RETURN CONCAT(_helper, ' 1=2');
END;
$$ -- here finish procedural part
LANGUAGE plpgsql; -- language specification
-- Below function will list all the tables which contain a specific string in the database
select TablesCount('StringToSearch');