How to output Blob field from Python tool

[cam_w]

I have sent a Blob field into a Python tool before with good success. I could read it as a bytearray and all was rainbows and yellow brick roads.

However, I'm trying to read a file as binary in the Python tool, into a bytearray and send it out of the Python tool as a Blob field. I assumed this would work, but it doesn't seem to work right. Is there guidance on this yet?

Thanks!

[cam_w]

Fact Checking myself -- The Blob input was coming in as 'bytes', so I changed the output datatype to bytes as well, but still not coming through on the output as a Blob.

[cam_w]

Release notes for 2019.1 say Blob data format is supported, so I'm not crazy ... :)

https://help.alteryx.com/ReleaseNotes/Designer/Designer_2019.1.htm?tocpath=Designer%7C_____1

Here's a sample workflow to demo what I'm asking about:

[cam_w · Accepted solution]

Looks like the CachedData.py write() function uses pandas' .dtypes and not python's type() to determine the data types of the columns, which makes sense. Pandas understands a string of python 'bytes' to be an 'object' type, which is the same for a regular string. So when DatastreamUtils.py __pandasFieldTypeAttributes() is called, it maps the bytes 'object' to a V_WString.

Looks like there's a __pythonFieldTypeAttributes() started, so my hopes are that we can eventually add python 'bytes' to this conversion to allow output of binary files as Blob fields.

In the meantime, I compromised and sent a temporary file path out of the Python tool and read the file using a Blob Input tool instead. It would have been cleaner and nicer to be able to do it in the Python tool, but we do what we can ...