ActiveRecord loads binary field incorrectly on Heroku, fine on OSX

Question

I have a rails 3.1 app that stores images in a binary field in a postgresql database (I am aware of potential issues with storing images in a database, but have to do so for

Answer 1

The 2n+1 smells like you're getting hex output from your bytea instead of the old escaped format. I'm guessing that you're using a dedicated database and that means PostgreSQL 9.0 which has a different default encoding for bytea:

When migrating from PostgeSQL 8.x to PostgreSQL 9.x you can run into issues with binary string compatibility. The default representation is hex in version 9 but version 8 it is set to escaped. You can make PostgreSQL 9 use escaped by manually setting bytea_output.

If I'm right then you can use the instructions in the above link or use this summarized version:

1. In the command line type "heroku config vars" to get your system details.
2. Extract the PostgreSQL username from your DATABASE_URL which looks like postgres://username:password@host/database_name.
3. Use heroku pg:psql to get a PostgreSQL console.
4. Execute ALTER ROLE username SET bytea_output TO 'escape'; from the the psql console where, of course, username is the username from (1).
5. Exit psql do a heroku restart to restart your application.

Then try again and hopefully you'll get the right bytes.