Support for binary type

Problem

PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite provide capabilities to store binary blobs:

• SQLite has a BLOB data type
• PostgreSQL has bytea and a Large Object feature, which stores the binary data in a separate table in a special format, and refers to that table by storing a value of type OID in your table.
• MySQL has BINARY and VARBINARY

Prisma does not support these data types.

Suggested solution

Add support for a binary type in PSL.

Alternatives

@onmyflow describes a workaround below.

Additional context

• MySQL 8 binary data type
• Supporting empty column type in SQLite during introspection

Original issue

Hi folks, I’m looking to store and access large arrays of binary data using PostgreSQL and Prisma, but it doesn’t seem like the type that would make the most sense for my use case here (bytea) is supported by Prisma. Is there some possible workaround or plans to add this as a supported type?

[cappslock]

@albertoperdomo I can’t speak to their use cases, but I can say that for quick prototypes or internal apps it can be convenient to centralize everything in postgres, particularly if file storage needs are limited and file sizes small and there are not many concurrent users. I’m not aware of any scenario where this is the best thing to do, but there are places where it makes sense to save effort. It would be nice to have blobs as a supported type in Prisma.

EDIT: I guess this is a use case: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/BinaryFilesInDB#When_should_files_be_stored_in_the_database.3F

[kentcdodds]

New URL for the byte type: https://www.prisma.io/docs/reference/api-reference/prisma-schema-reference#bytes