Can you store bytes (Fernet token) in a MySQL table? python

Question

I am trying to insert this Fernet encrypted token into my table in my database. It is encrypted Medical Information about a Scout

b'gAAAAABcIRmX3txIuOrw6FoSxy7I1vorA8hTTzMcXQGwch_jRBtWTsR9TwVyH125K0R6zG-BTvhv_SpZuW-Hs1WotaabBVj5tQ=='

By using this Insert statement

    sqlcommand = "INSERT INTO scoutinfo (scoutID, firstname,secondname,age,gender,ethnicity,address,postcode,medicalinfo,parentID,patrolID,userID) VALUES (%s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s, %s)"
ScoutInput = (
    str(ScoutID), FName.get(), SName.get(), str(Age.get()), str(Gender.get()), str(Ethnicity.get()), Address.get(),
    Postcode.get(), EcryptMedInfo, str(ParentID[0]), str(PatrolID), str(UserID))
mycursor.execute(sqlcommand, ScoutInput)

Upon running, the program executes, however the insert is not applied to the table, and no, I have not forgotten about mydb.commit() . I believe that bytes is an unsupported datatype for MySQL and thus cannot be stored. I that case how would I overcome this, so that I will be able to decrypt the stored token by:

Ecy.decrypt(EcryptMedInfo)

Answer 1

If there is b"" and you want to transform it into string. You should use decode() instead of str() . Because it is difficult to reverse it if you used str() , but it will be easy if you use decode() .

a = b"\x00\x00"
print((a,a.decode(),str(a)))
print(a == a.decode().encode())
#(b'\x00\x00', '\x00\x00', "b'\\x00\\x00'")
#True

When i use mysql.connector , i don't have to transform them into string by myself.

import mysql.connector as mysql
from base64 import b64encode, b64decode
conn = mysql.connect(user="kr",passwd="kr",db="kr")
cur = conn.cursor()

def go(stat,param=None):
    try:
        cur.execute(stat,param)
        conn.commit()
    except Exception as e:
        conn.rollback()
        print(e)
go("""
    CREATE TABLE test(
    col varchar(90) NOT NULL
)""")
something = b64encode(b"\x00\x00")
print(something,type(something)) 
go(stat="""INSERT INTO test (col) VALUES (%s)""", param=[something])

cur.execute("SELECT col from test")
result = cur.fetchone()[0]
print([b64decode(result)])
#b'AAA=' <class 'bytes'>
#[b'\x00\x00']

I believe that bytes is an unsupported datatype for MySQL and thus cannot be stored.

Mysql can store it. Mysql byte array storage