datastore: blob value is lost #301
Description
I'm trying to save a Buffer as a property. From what I can see this should be possibe. In this example the Buffer contains 21 bytes:
dataset.save({
key: dataset.key('Location'),
data: {
id: '113-16',
geometry: new Buffer('010100000000000000000059400000000000006940', 'hex')
}
}, function (err, key) {
console.log(err || key);
});
However when I retrieve the entity I get a Buffer with zero length.
dataset.get(dataset.key([ 'Location', 5707702298738688 ]), function (err, entity) {
console.log(err || entity.data.geometry.length);
});
In your lib/datastore/entity.js, function propertyToValue at line 362 you're creating a Buffer with the property.blob_value as base64:
if (exists(property.blob_value)) {
return new Buffer(property.blob_value, 'base64');
}
When I debugged at this point I found that property.blob_value was a ByteBufferNB object, not a base64 string. I'm wondering if you meant to base64 encode the original value in function valueToProperty at line 430:
if (v instanceof Buffer) {
p.blob_value = v; // should it be v.toString('base64') ?
return p;
}
But that doesn't make sense since the datastore_v1.proto file defines blob_value as bytes not string at line 111:
optional string blob_key_value = 16;
I suppose I could simply store my data directly as a base64-encoded string. But I'd prefer the compactness and efficiency of binary storage if possible.