SQLAlchemy: JSON vs. PickleType vs. raw string for serialised data

[Cameron Simpson]

On 28Feb2022 10:11, Loris Bennett <loris.bennett at fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>I have an SQLAlchemy class for an event:
>
>  class UserEvent(Base):
>      __tablename__ = "user_events"
>
>      id = Column('id', Integer, primary_key=True)
>      date = Column('date', Date, nullable=False)
>      uid = Column('gid', String(64), ForeignKey('users.uid'), nullable=False)
>      info = ??
>
>The event may have arbitrary, but dict-like data associated with it,
>which I want to add in the field 'info'.  This data never needs to be
>modified, once the event has been inserted into the DB.
>
>What type should the info field have?  JSON, PickleType, String, or
>something else?

I would use JSON, it expresses dicts well provided the dicts contain 
only basic types (strings, numbers, other dicts/lists of basic types 
recursively).

I have personal problems with pickle because nonPython code can't read 
it.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>