Problem storing binary data

[Alex Haan]

I have searched and tried several things for too long, so I hope someone can tell me what stupid thing i forget to do..

I have a simple mysql table, with id (integer) and data (blob) fields.

I read in a (binary, linux) file and want to store it in the database as such. But i just cant get past the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test.py", line 14, in ?
c.execute(query)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 146, in execute
query = query.encode(charset)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xcf in position 614: ordinal not in range(128)

==============================
script:

import os
import MySQLdb

db = MySQLdb.connect(db="[db]", user="[username]", passwd="[password]")
c = db.cursor()

fd = open("file", 'rb')
data = fd.read()

query = "INSERT INTO torrent_filedata (id, data) VALUES ('%d', '%s')" \ % (9999, MySQLdb.escape_string(data))
c.execute(query)

c.close()
db.close()

Also, i have been using MySQLdb.escape_string(). But the docs say i should use connection.escape_string(). I tried to understand how i should actually implement that but didnt manage to do so.

[Alex Haan]

doh..
Debian 1:3.3.5-13
Python 2.4.4c0
MySQLdb 1.2.1_p2

[Alex Haan]

Thank you for your swift response. A simple tip, and it works flawlessly now.

Hmm, and after reading the docs i can't say that that information wasn't in there. But if you know what to look for it is easier to find :)

Doesn't say anything about not needing the escape_string() function, but it sure keeps the code cleaner.

[Andy Dustman]

I wish people would stop things the hard and wrong way (i.e. what you're doing) and do it the easy and right way:

query = "INSERT INTO torrent_filedata (id, data) VALUES (%s, %s)"
parameters = (9999, data)
c.execute(query, parameters)

Do NOT use escape_string(). Period. escape_string() is only if you are using _mysql directly. If you are using MySQLdb, it does all the escaping for you.