How to convert Blob data to string in Arcpy?

Question

I am using Arcpy to load a table from Excel. One of the fields has a lot of text (up to 2000 characters) and when using arcpy.MakeTableView_management the field is given the type 'BLOB'. Is there any way to either prevent this from happening, i.e. making sure the field type is 'Text', or is there a way of reading the text in python so the data can be used?

I have read BLOB TYPE in Arcmap but it does not answer the question. I am specifically trying to read the data in Python, while the previous question referred to reading it in ArcMap.

• Vince: How is this not a duplicste of the referenced question?
• Samuel Hicks: I am specifically trying to read the data in Python, while the previous question referred to reading it in ArcMap
• Vince: If it were an option, it would have been documented; therefore you need to write some code. What have you written so far?
• Samuel Hicks: I have been able to extract individual characters using memoryview(): rows = arcpy.da.SearchCursor("Table","Comments") for row in rows: memview = memoryview(row[0]) print memview[2]
• PolyGeo: Please edit your question for any requested clarifications.

Answer 1

Reading Blobs:

from arcpy import da
import os
with da.SearchCursor(r"c:\temp\demo.gdb\table",['blobFieldname','fileName']) as cursor:
 for row in cursor:
 binaryRep = row[0]
 fileName = row[1]
 # save to disk
 open(r"c:\saveFolder" + os.sep + fileName, 'wb').write(binaryRep.tobytes())
 del row
 del binaryRep
 del fileName