D. Dante Lorenso wrote:
All,
I want to use the ENCRYPT and DECRYPT functions from contrib, but they
require inputs of BYTEA.
My data is in VARCHAR and TEXT fields and when I try to use the contrib
functions, they complain about wrong datatypes. Is there a string
function or something that will take a VARCHAR or TEXT input and output
a BYTEA so that I can use that as input for the ENCRYPT/DECRYPT functions?
I know about creating a CAST from VARCHAR to BYTEA, but the problem with
a CAST is that it doesn't port to other database servers when I do a
dump and restore.
Doesn't it?
Hmm... seems to dump for me in 8.2
> That forces me to manually have to recreate the cast
each time a new database is set up and usually that's the step that gets
forgotten.
Surely you have a script that creates your databases for you?
Is there a function that will do what I want to convert the datatype
without having to create a CAST that PostgreSQL doesn't have natively?
How else are you supposed to use the ENCRYPT and DECRYPT functions?
With actual bytea types?
Anyway this will convert for you - PG can get from an unknown quoted
literal to bytea just fine.
CREATE FUNCTION text2bytea(text) RETURNS bytea AS $_$
DECLARE
b bytea;
BEGIN
EXECUTE 'SELECT ' || quote_literal($1) || '::bytea' INTO b;
RETURN b;
END
$_$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;
And here's the cast definition that goes with it
CREATE CAST (text AS bytea) WITH FUNCTION public.text2bytea(text);
HTH
--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd
---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
