How to download Postgres bytea column as file

Question

Currently, i have a number of files stored in postgres 8.4 as bytea. The file types are .doc, .odt, .pdf, .txt and etc.

May i know how to download all the file store

Answer 1

Here's the simplest thing I could come up with:

psql -qAt "select encode(file,'base64') from files limit 1" | base64 -d

The -qAt is important as it strips off any formatting of the output. These options are available inside the psql shell, too.