Question

I am saving a serialized object to a mysql database blob.

After inserting some test objects and then trying to view the table, i am presented with lots of garbage and “PuTTYPuTTY” several times.

I believe this has something to do with character encoding and the blob containing strange characters.

I am just wanting to check and see if this is going to cause problems with my database, or if this is just a problem with putty showing the data?

Description of the QuizTable:

+-------------+-------------+-------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+---------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Field       | Type        | Collation         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          | Privileges                      | Comment                                                                                                           |
+-------------+-------------+-------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+---------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| classId     | varchar(20) | latin1_swedish_ci | NO   |     | NULL    |                | select,insert,update,references | FK related to the ClassTable. This way each Class in the ClassTable is associated with its quiz in the QuizTable. |
| quizId      | int(11)     | NULL              | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment | select,insert,update,references | This is the quiz number associated with the quiz.                                                                 |
| quizObject  | blob        | NULL              | NO   |     | NULL    |                | select,insert,update,references | This is the actual quiz object.                                                                                   |
| quizEnabled | tinyint(1)  | NULL              | NO   |     | NULL    |                | select,insert,update,references |                                                                                                                   |
+-------------+-------------+-------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+---------------------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

---

What i see when i try to view the table contents:

select * from QuizTable;

questionTextq ~ xp    sq ~    w
t q1a1t q1a2xt 1t q1sq ~     sq ~    w
t q2a1t q2a2t q2a3xt 2t q2xt test3 |           1 |
+-------------+--------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Answer 1

I believe you can use the hex function on blobs as well as strings. You can run a query like this.

Select HEX(quizObject) From QuizTable Where....