BLOB data type

This page documents the preview version (v2.23). Preview includes features under active development and is for development and testing only. For production, use the stable version (v2024.1). To learn more, see Versioning.

Synopsis

Use the BLOB data type to represent arbitrary binary data of variable length.

Syntax

type_specification ::= BLOB

blob_literal ::= "0x" [ hex_digit hex_digit ...]

Where

  • hex_digit is a hexadecimal digit ([0-9a-fA-F]).

Semantics

  • Columns of type BLOB can be part of the PRIMARY KEY.
  • Implicitly, BLOB data type is neither convertible nor comparable with other data types.
  • Two series of builtin-functions BlobAs<Type> and <Type>AsBlob are provided for conversion between BLOB and other data types.
  • BLOB size is virtually unlimited.

Examples

ycqlsh:example> CREATE TABLE messages(id INT PRIMARY KEY, content BLOB);

ycqlsh:example> INSERT INTO messages (id, content) VALUES (1, 0xab00ff);

ycqlsh:example> INSERT INTO messages (id, content) VALUES (2, 0x);

ycqlsh:example> UPDATE messages SET content = 0x0f0f WHERE id = 2;

ycqlsh:example> SELECT * FROM messages;

 id | content
----+----------
  2 |   0x0f0f
  1 | 0xab00ff

See also