Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2007 10:23:55 -0700
From: Michael Fuhr <mike@fuhr.org>
To: "::Willi the One::" <sonic_and_tails2000@yahoo.com>
Cc: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Retrieving timestamp data
Message-ID: <20070304172355.GA38897@winnie.fuhr.org>
References: <20070304152310.95205.qmail@web36709.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
In-Reply-To: <20070304152310.95205.qmail@web36709.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 07:23:10AM -0800, ::Willi the One:: wrote:
> In the documentation, it says that PQgetvalue()
> returns string values for strings and "the value is in
> the binary representation determined by the data
> type’s typsend and typreceive functions."

You've omitted part of what the documentation says.  The complete
text is:

  For data in text format, the value returned by PQgetvalue is a
  null-terminated character string representation of the field
  value.  For data in binary format, the value is in the binary
  representation determined by the data type's typsend and typreceive
  functions.

> The problem is, where's the typsend and typrecieve located?

In the backend.  You can find out which functions they are by
querying pg_type, and you can learn more about the functions
themselves by querying pg_proc and by examining the source code.
But you should only need to do this if you need query results in
binary format.  Do you?

> For example, if I want to retrieve a timestamp data,
> how would I do it? Will it return as a string when I
> call PQgetvalue()? What about other types such Points
> or inet types?

Unless you request results in binary format all values will be
returned as text strings.  What happened when you tried it?  Are
you requesting results in binary format?

-- 
Michael Fuhr