How to Save BLOB as File in PL/SQL?

Here I am giving an example to save BLOB data as a file in PL/SQL. BLOB data you can get it from the table having BLOB column, or you can get it from a file on the disk.

PL/SQL Function Example to Save BLOB as a File

The below procedure takes the following three arguments:

1. Oracle Directory Object name (as i_dir).
2. Save as filename (as i_file).
3. BLOB data (as i_blob).

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE blob_to_file (i_dir    IN VARCHAR2,
                                          i_file   IN VARCHAR2,
                                          i_blob   IN BLOB)
AS
   l_file       UTL_FILE.file_type;
   l_buffer     RAW (32767);
   l_amount     BINARY_INTEGER := 32767;
   l_pos        INTEGER := 1;
   l_blob_len   INTEGER;
BEGIN
   l_blob_len := DBMS_LOB.getlength (i_blob);

   l_file :=
      UTL_FILE.fopen (i_dir,
                      i_file,
                      'WB',
                      32767);

   WHILE l_pos < l_blob_len
   LOOP
      DBMS_LOB.read (i_blob,
                     l_amount,
                     l_pos,
                     l_buffer);
      UTL_FILE.put_raw (l_file, l_buffer, TRUE);
      l_pos := l_pos + l_amount;
   END LOOP;

   UTL_FILE.fclose (l_file);
EXCEPTION
   WHEN OTHERS
   THEN
      IF UTL_FILE.is_open (l_file)
      THEN
         UTL_FILE.fclose (l_file);
      END IF;

      RAISE;
END blob_to_file;

Test

The following PL/SQL block will call the above procedure by passing the Oracle directory object, filename and BLOB data. For the BLOB data, I am using the GET_BLOB function for which I have given an example in my previous blog post: Get BLOB from a File in PL/SQL. In the below case, it will get the BLOB data from a file myfile.jpg from MY_DIR location and will save it to file abc.jpg in IMG_DIR location.

DECLARE
   f_blob   BLOB;
BEGIN
   /* check the above mentioned link for get_blob function example */
   f_blob := get_blob ('MY_DIR', 'myfile.jpg');
   /* now pass the blob to blob_to_file procedure to save it as a file */
   blob_to_file ('IMG_DIR', 'abc.jpg', f_blob);
END;

Now you can check the location of IMG_DIR directory for the file created through BLOB.

See also:

• How to Create an Oracle Directory Object?
• Learn how to Extract BLOB data from Oracle Table using Toad