keeping images in a bytea field on AWS RDS

Started by Richard Bernsteinabout 6 years ago5 messagesgeneral
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#1Richard Bernstein
richb201@gmail.com

I am using postgresql on RDS. I need to upload an image to the table. I
understand that I need to set the PGDATA directory and place the image file
in it, before setting the path in the bytea field. But how do I set PGDATA
if I don't have the ability to set an environment variable, and don't have
access to the following on an AWS controlled installation?

$ initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data or

pg_ctl -D /usr/local/pgsql/data initdb

#2Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com
In reply to: Richard Bernstein (#1)
Re: keeping images in a bytea field on AWS RDS

On Mar 31, 2020, at 12:49, Richard Bernstein <richb201@gmail.com> wrote:

I am using postgresql on RDS. I need to upload an image to the table. I understand that I need to set the PGDATA directory and place the image file in it, before setting the path in the bytea field. But how do I set PGDATA if I don't have the ability to set an environment variable, and don't have access to the following on an AWS controlled installation?

No, that's not how you upload images to a bytea field; you use the standard client library and send the bytea data over that way. It works the same on community PostgreSQL and RDS. PostgreSQL handles managing the bytea data for you. Note that for very large binary objects, storing them in the database is not going to be very efficient versus keeping them in the filesystem (noting, of course, that you don't have access to the filesystem of an RDS server).

--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com

#3Alan Hodgson
ahodgson@lists.simkin.ca
In reply to: Richard Bernstein (#1)
Re: keeping images in a bytea field on AWS RDS

On Tue, 2020-03-31 at 15:49 -0400, Richard Bernstein wrote:

I am using postgresql on RDS. I need to upload an image to the table.
I understand that I need to set the PGDATA directory and place the
image file in it, before setting the path in the bytea field. But how
do I set PGDATA if I don't have the ability to set an
environment variable, and don't have access to the following on an AWS
controlled installation?

You don't put a file path into a bytea field or do anything with the
database filesystem. You insert the contents of the actual file into the
field using SQL commands.

#4Ron
ronljohnsonjr@gmail.com
In reply to: Richard Bernstein (#1)
Re: keeping images in a bytea field on AWS RDS

On 3/31/20 2:49 PM, Richard Bernstein wrote:

I am using postgresql on RDS. I need to upload an image to the table. I
understand that I need to set the PGDATA directory and place the image
file in it, before setting the path in the bytea field. But how do I set
PGDATA if I don't have the ability to set an environment variable, and
don't have access to the following on an AWS controlled installation?

$ initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

or
pg_ctl -D /usr/local/pgsql/data initdb

initdb is definitely *not* what you want to do just to load an image into an
exiting database.

--
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

#5Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com
In reply to: Ron (#4)
Re: keeping images in a bytea field on AWS RDS

On Mar 31, 2020, at 13:52, Ron <ronljohnsonjr@gmail.com> wrote:
initdb is definitely not what you want to do just to load an image into an exiting database.

I think there may be some confusion on the OP's part because many sources give out *advice* to put a filesystem path, rather than the entire actual binary object, into the database... and that's still good advice, even on RDS! It just means that path needs to be a URI or some other piece of metadata that points to a different server, rather than the RDS server.

--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com