(PHP 4 >= 4.3.0, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
pg_unescape_bytea — Unescape binary for bytea type
pg_unescape_bytea() unescapes PostgreSQL bytea data values. It returns the unescaped string, possibly containing binary data.
Note:
When you
SELECTa bytea type, PostgreSQL returns octal byte values prefixed with '\' (e.g. \032). Users are supposed to convert back to binary format manually.
stringA string containing PostgreSQL bytea data to be converted into a PHP binary string.
A string containing the unescaped data.
Example #1 pg_unescape_bytea() example
<?php
// Connect to the database
$dbconn = pg_connect('dbname=foo');
// Get the bytea data
$res = pg_query("SELECT data FROM gallery WHERE name='Pine trees'");
$raw = pg_fetch_result($res, 'data');
// Convert to binary and send to the browser
header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
echo pg_unescape_bytea($raw);
?>
PostgreSQL 9.0 introduced "hex" as the new default format for encoding binary data. Because "pg_unescape_bytea" only works with the old "escape" format, you need to do pg_query('SET bytea_output = "escape";'); before executing your select queries.
More details can be found here: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/datatype-binary.html
[Ed: Recent PostgreSQL versions support unescaping the "hex" format.]The workaround is to configure a property in the postgres database for the user, to make postgres behave as the old default.
ALTER USER username SET bytea_output = 'escape';
(or using the pgadmin interface)