return "content" as bytea

[PaulVladescu]

"To access binary content, you must coerce the content from the default varchar representation to a bytea representation using the text_to_bytea function. Using the default varchar::bytea cast will not work, as the cast will stop the first time it hits a zero-valued byte (common in binary data).
"
Composite type "public.http_response"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-------------------+-----------
status | integer |
content_type | character varying |
headers | http_header[] |
content | character varying |

Why not returning the "content" as bytea

[pramsey]

Because then we have the reverse inconvenience for people who just want strings.

[PaulVladescu]

Hello Paul, First of all congratulations for the piece of software this extension is and thank you for sharing it. I wish it were a standard extension for Postgres since it is extremely useful. Why I wish "content" data type to be "bytea": a. I can't convert "character varying" to "bytea". I didn't find any function to do such a conversion. If you know one, please share it with me. b. Converting form "bytea" to something else is straightforward and should be done based on "content_type" (this is a reason for returning "content_type"). I am not suggesting to modify "http(http_request)" function but to build another one "httpb(http_request)" (b in httpb stands for binary). "httpb(http_request)" wil return " Composite type "*public.httpb_response*" Column | Type | Modifiers --------------+-------------------+----------- status | integer | content_type | character varying | headers | http_header[] | content | bytea | " I am sure things are not as simple as they seem to be, but the new function will make others happy too. Sincerely, Paul Vladescu

…

On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 5:46 PM Paul Ramsey ***@***.***> wrote: Because then we have the reverse inconvenience for people who just want strings. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#172 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BDJWVKH6YG637UEFOLKERBLX7VCDTAVCNFSM6AAAAAA6CEJ3JWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMYTONRUGY2DGMBWGA> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[pramsey]

To convert from text to bytea you have to tell the system how the high bits are encoded in the text string. Usually people are just converting plain ASCII7 text, and decode('the text string', 'escape') works fine for that.

[PaulVladescu]

In "public.http_response.content" there is the binary content of a pdf file, decode is not useful.

[pramsey]

And using text_to_bytea as documented is no good?

[PaulVladescu]

I was looking for this function "text_to_bytea" first thing after reading your documentation, but I couldn't find it. Maybe I just missed it. If you know about it please tell me where to find it.

[pramsey]

Well, it's here.

https://github.com/pramsey/pgsql-http/blob/master/http--1.6.sql#L121

But if you have an older version, it might not exist yet. You can use textsend(http.content) instead, as that is a pgsql built-in.

[PaulVladescu]

I updated to http version 1.6 and the function text_to_bytea is present.
It also works with textsend.

Thank you very much