Re: understanding .description newbie ?

johnf wrote:
> Hi,
> dbapi 2.0 defines what a cursor.description returns.  In my case the 
> cursor.description returns {fieldName, someNumber, None,...}.  I would like 
> to better understand what the "someNumber" means.  How does python know 
> that '1043' is a varchar (python string??).
>   

Python doesn't.  Psycopg knows, because it knows the type codes that
Postgres uses.  Each database can use different codes.

If you want to use this info, you can say:

    if descr[i][1] in psycopg.STRING.values:
        pass # this is a string type
    elif descr[i][1] in psycopg.NUMBER.values:
        pass # this is a numeric type
    elif ...

Dbapi defines STRING, NUMBER, BINARY, DATETIME and ROWID.  Psycopg adds
DATE, TIME, FLOAT, INTERVAL, and LONGINTEGER.

-- 
Tim Roberts, [email protected]
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.