Can't pass a bytearray to SET

[red-lithium]

Version: redis-py 3.3.8 and redis 5.0.5

Platform: Python 3.6.8 on Ubuntu 18.04

Description: Redis strings are should be binary safe, but redis.set(key, value) doesn't accept a bytearray as a valid type. Passing a bytearray in as a value, results in the following exception:
Invalid input of type: 'bytearray'. Convert to a byte, string or number first.

I understand that this might be a limitation of Python or perhaps I've misunderstood the Redis documentation. Thanks in advance.

Example code:

#!/usr/bin/python3
import redis

redis = redis.Redis(host="localhost", port=6379, db=0)

# This will result in an exception
redis.set("my-key", bytearray(10))

[andymccurdy]

All keys and values need to be serialized to bytes before being transmitted to the Redis server. redis-py only knows how to implicitly convert the following types: bytes, str, float and int.

You can convert the bytearray to bytes yourself with: redis.set('my-key', bytes(bytearray(10)))

[red-lithium]

Thanks for responding! I'm happy to hear that I can actually use redis-py with raw bytes. I got a bit hung up on the types specified in the exception (i.e. byte, string, number). What do you think about including bytes in the exception, for example:
Invalid input of type: 'bytearray'. Convert to a byte, bytes, string or number first.

I don't think it's of any critical importance that this change be made, but as a new user to the library, I wouldn't have had to bother you if I had known that bytes was permitted in addition to byte.

Thanks again.

[andymccurdy]

Sure, we can clean up the error message. Perhaps something like:

"Invalid input of type: 'bytearray'. redis-py only accepts 'bytes', 'str', 'int' and 'float' objects."

Feel free to submit a PR and I'll get it merged.

[red-lithium]

Awesome, thanks Andy! I will submit a PR when I next get a chance.

[andymccurdy]

Improved the error message to be more obvious.

[earonesty]

fyi, for certain workflows, using a bytearray directly can be significantly more performant for high-speed ops. all c++ functions and mypy, etc should automatically promote. i think it's easy to support