Re: UTF8 encoding and non-text data types - Mailing list pgsql-sql

From Medi Montaseri
Subject Re: UTF8 encoding and non-text data types
Date
Msg-id 8078a1730801141101j4bc0dc4chdffee5eaebdb99da@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to UTF8 encoding and non-text data types  ("Medi Montaseri" <montaseri@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: UTF8 encoding and non-text data types  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-sql
Thanks Steve,

Actually I do not insert text data into my numeric field.
As I mentioned given
create table t1 { name text, cost decimal }
then I would like to insert numeric data into column "cost" because then I can later benefit from numerical operators like SUM, AVG, etc

More specifically, I am using HTML, Perl and PG. So from the HTML point of view a textfield is just some strings. So my user would enter 12345 but expressed in UTF8. Perl would get this and use DBI to insert it into PG

What I am experiencing now is that DB errors that I am trying to insert an incorrect data into column "cost" which is numeric and the data is coming in from HTML in UTF8

Mybe I have to convert it to ASCII numbers in Perl before inserting  them into PG

Thanks
Medi

On Jan 13, 2008 8:51 PM, Steve Midgley <public@misuse.org> wrote:
At 02:22 PM 1/13/2008, pgsql-sql-owner@postgresql.org wrote:
>Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:21:00 -0800
>From: "Medi Montaseri" < montaseri@gmail.com>
>To: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
>Subject: UTF8 encoding and non-text data types
>Message-ID:
>< 8078a1730801121421l1c9b90c1lc65d36cf6e752a6f@mail.gmail.com>
>
>I understand PG supports UTF-8 encoding and I have sucessfully
>inserted
>Unicode text into columns. I was wondering about other data types such
>as
>numbers, decimal, dates
>
>That is, say I have a table t1 with
>create table t1 { name text, cost decimal }
>I can insert UTF8 text datatype into this table with no problem
>But if my application attempts to insert numbers encloded in UTF8,
>then I
>get wrong datatype error
>
>Is the solution for the application layer (not database) to convert
>the
>non-text UTF8 numbers to ASCII and then insert it into database ?
>
>Thanks
>Medi

Hi Medi,

I have only limited experience in this area, but it sounds like you
sending your numbers as strings? In your example:

>create table t1 { name text, cost decimal };

insert into t1 (name, cost) values ('name1', '1');

I can't think of how else you're sending numeric values as UTF8? I know
that Pg will accept numbers as strings and convert internally (that has
worked for me in some object relational environments where I don't
choose to cope with data types), but I think it would be better if you
simply didn't send your numeric data in quotations, whether as UTF8 or
ASCII. If you don't have control over this layer (that quotes your
values), then I'd say converting to ASCII would solve the problem. But
better to convert to numeric and not ship quoted strings at all.

I may be totally off-base and missing something fundamental and I'm
very open to correction (by anyone), but that's what I can see here.

Best regards,

Steve


pgsql-sql by date:

Previous
From: "Marcin Krawczyk"
Date:
Subject: Re: table column names - search
Next
From: Tom Lane
Date:
Subject: Re: UTF8 encoding and non-text data types