[Dbix-class] Making DBD::Pg to return Postgres arrays as Perl arrays

[Adam Sjøgren]

I wrote:

> When I insert new rows where the field has a Perl-array as the value,
> DBIx::Class+DBD::Pg automatically stores them in the database, as hoped
> - nice!

> But when I read the field again, I get the textual "Postgres-encoded"
> representation back (i.e. a string like '{"(a,b,c)","(d,e,f)"}').

After looking more closely on this:

Simple arrays work out of the box, i.e. text[] I can read/write and
values are automatically converted from Perl arrays when writing to the
database, and converted back to Perl arrays when reading.

The problem I have is only when my datatype is a (custom) tuple.

I.e. in Postgres I have:

  CREATE TYPE entry AS (tag TEXT, created TIMESTAMP, notes TEXT, initials TEXT);
  ALTER TABLE vehicle ADD COLUMN entrylist entry ARRAY;

I would like to be able to do:

  $schema->resultset('Vehicle')->create({ entrylist=>[
                                                      [ 'a', '2015-05-07', 'info', 'adsj' ],
                                                      [ 'b', '2015-05-07', 'more', 'adsj' ],
                                                     ] });

and I was hoping that there was a way to configure DBIx::Class/DBD::Pg
for that to work (it doesn't, the list-ref of list-refs gets sent to the
database as '{{"a",...},{"b",...}}' which should be '{("a",...),("b",...)}',
and Postgres complains).

... and I was hoping that when reading from the database, I could
automatically get a list-ref of list-refs back.

Maybe I was hoping for too much - I just wanted to check that I wasn't
missing something obvious, before hacking together a parser for
Postgres' format.

  Best regards,

    Adam

Adding Cc to the DBD::Pg mailing list, as it now looks to me to perhaps
not just be me not configuring DBIx::Class properly.

-- 
                                                          Adam Sjøgren
                                                    adsj at novozymes.com