PostgreSQL Python: Handling Binary Data

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to store binary data in the PostgreSQL database using Python.

This tutorial picks up from where the Call Stored Procedures Tutorial left off.

Standard SQL defines a BLOB as the binary large object for storing binary data in the database. Using the BLOB data type, you can store binary data such as images, documents, and so on in a table.

PostgreSQL does not support BLOB data type. Instead, it uses the BYTEA data type for storing binary data.

Let’s take a look at the part_drawings table.

The part_drawings table stores the pictures of parts in the drawing_data column. We will show you how to insert binary data into this column and read it back.

Insert binary data into a table

To insert binary data into a table, you use the following steps:

1. First, read data from a file.
2. Next, connect to the PostgreSQL database by creating a new connection object from the connect() function.
3. Then, create a cursor object from the Connection object.
4. After that, execute the INSERT statement with the input values. For binary data, use the Binary object of the psycopg2 module
5. Finally, commit the changes permanently to the PostgreSQL database by calling the commit() method of the connection object.

The following write_blob() function reads binary data from a file specified by the path_to_file parameter and inserts it into the part_drawings table.

import psycopg2
from config import load_config


def write_blob(part_id, path_to_file, file_extension):
    """ Insert a BLOB into a table """
    # read database configuration
    params = load_config()

    # read data from a picture
    data = open(path_to_file, 'rb').read()

    
    try:
        # connect to the PostgresQL database
        with psycopg2.connect(**params) as conn:
            # create a new cursor object
            with  conn.cursor() as cur:
                # execute the INSERT statement
                cur.execute("INSERT INTO part_drawings(part_id,file_extension,drawing_data) " +
                            "VALUES(%s,%s,%s)",
                            (part_id, file_extension, psycopg2.Binary(data)))
                
            conn.commit()
        
    except (Exception, psycopg2.DatabaseError) as error:
        print(error)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    write_blob(1, 'images/input/simtray.png', 'png')
    write_blob(2, 'images/input/speaker.png', 'png')        Code language: Python (python)

Read binary data from a table

The steps of reading binary data from a table are similar to the steps of querying data from a table. After fetching binary data from the table, you can save it to a file, output it to the web browser, and so on.

The following read_blob() function selects BLOB data from the part_drawings table based on a specified part id and saves the binary data to a file.

import psycopg2
from config import load_config

def read_blob(part_id, path_to_dir):
    """ Read BLOB data from a table """
    # read database configuration
    config = load_config()

    try:
        # connect to the PostgresQL database
        with  psycopg2.connect(**config) as conn:
            with conn.cursor() as cur:
                # execute the SELECT statement
                cur.execute(""" SELECT part_name, file_extension, drawing_data
                                FROM part_drawings
                                INNER JOIN parts on parts.part_id = part_drawings.part_id
                                WHERE parts.part_id = %s """,
                            (part_id,))

                blob = cur.fetchone()
                
                # write blob data into file
                open(path_to_dir + blob[0] + '.' + blob[1], 'wb').write(blob[2])
    except (Exception, psycopg2.DatabaseError) as error:
        print(error)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    read_blob(1, 'images/output/')
    read_blob(2, 'images/output/')                Code language: Python (python)

The following snippet reads the binary data of the parts with id values 1 and 2 and saves the binary data to the images/output directory.

Download the project source code

In this tutorial, you have learned how to write binary data to a table and read it back using Python.