# class PG::BinaryEncoder::CopyRow

This class encodes one row of arbitrary columns for transmission as COPY data in binary format. See the COPY command for description of the format.

It is intended to be used in conjunction with `PG::Connection#put_copy_data` .

The columns are expected as Array of values. The single values are encoded as defined in the assigned `type_map`. If no type_map was assigned, all values are converted to strings by `PG::BinaryEncoder::String`.

Example with default type map ( `TypeMapAllStrings` ):

    conn.exec "create table my_table (a text,b int,c bool)"
    enco = PG::BinaryEncoder::CopyRow.new
    conn.copy_data "COPY my_table FROM STDIN WITH (FORMAT binary)", enco do
      conn.put_copy_data ["astring", "\x00\x00\x00\a", "\x00"]
      conn.put_copy_data ["string2", "\x00\x00\x00*", "\x01"]
    end

This creates `my_table` and inserts two rows with binary fields.

The binary format is less portable and less readable than the text format. It is therefore recommended to either manually assign a type encoder for each column per `PG::TypeMapByColumn`, or to make use of `PG::BasicTypeMapBasedOnResult` to assign them based on the table OIDs.

Manually assigning a type encoder works per type map like so:

    conn.exec "create table my_table (a text,b int,c bool)"
    tm = PG::TypeMapByColumn.new( [
      PG::BinaryEncoder::String.new,
      PG::BinaryEncoder::Int4.new,
      PG::BinaryEncoder::Boolean.new] )
    enco = PG::BinaryEncoder::CopyRow.new( type_map: tm )
    conn.copy_data "COPY my_table FROM STDIN WITH (FORMAT binary)", enco do
      conn.put_copy_data ["astring", 7, false]
      conn.put_copy_data ["string2", 42, true]
    end

See also `PG::BinaryDecoder::CopyRow` for the decoding direction with `PG::Connection#get_copy_data` .