Before, PL/Python converted data between SQL and Python by going
through a C string representation. This broke for bytea in two ways:
- On input (function parameters), you would get a Python string that
contains bytea's particular external representation with backslashes
etc., instead of a sequence of bytes, which is what you would expect
in a Python environment. This problem is exacerbated by the new
bytea output format.
- On output (function return value), null bytes in the Python string
would cause truncation before the data gets stored into a bytea
datum.
This is now fixed by converting directly between the PostgreSQL datum
and the Python representation.
The required generalized infrastructure also allows for other
improvements in passing:
- When returning a boolean value, the SQL datum is now true if and
only if Python considers the value that was passed out of the
PL/Python function to be true. Previously, this determination was
left to the boolean data type input function. So, now returning
'foo' results in true, because Python considers it true, rather than
false because PostgreSQL considers it false.
- On input, we can convert the integer and float types directly to
their Python equivalents without having to go through an
intermediate string representation.
original patch by Caleb Welton, with updates by myself
that's shorter-lived than the expression state being evaluated in it really
doesn't work :-( --- we end up with fn_extra caches getting deleted while
still in use. Rather than abandon the notion of caching expression state
across domain_in calls altogether, I chose to make domain_in a bit cozier
with ExprContext. All we really need for evaluating variable-free
expressions is an ExprContext, not an EState, so I invented the notion of a
"standalone" ExprContext. domain_in can prevent resource leakages by doing
a ReScanExprContext on this rather than having to free it entirely; so we
can make the ExprContext have the same lifespan (and particularly the same
per_query memory context) as the expression state structs.
that apply the necessary domain constraint checks immediately. This fixes
cases where domain constraints went unchecked for statement parameters,
PL function local variables and results, etc. We can also eliminate existing
special cases for domains in places that had gotten it right, eg COPY.
Also, allow domains over domains (base of a domain is another domain type).
This almost worked before, but was disallowed because the original patch
hadn't gotten it quite right.
