How to insert an array of strings in javascript into PostgreSQL - node.js

Question

I am building an API server which accepts file uploads using multer.
I need to store an array of all the paths to all files uploaded for each request to a column in the PostgreSQL database which I have connected to the server.
Say I have a table created with the following query
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS records
(
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
created_on TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW(),
created_by INTEGER,
title VARCHAR NOT NULL,
type VARCHAR NOT NULL
)
How do I define a new column filepaths on the above table where I can insert a javascript string array (ex: ['path-to-file-1', 'path-to-file-2', 'path-to-file-3']).
Also how do I retrive, update/edit the list in javascript using node-postgres

Answer 1

You have 2 options:
use json or jsonb type. In the case string to insert will look:
'["path-to-file-1", "path-to-file-2", "path-to-file-3"]'
I would prefer jsonb - it allows to have good indexes. Json is rather just text with some additional built-in functions.
Use array of text - something like filepaths text[]. To insert you can use:
ARRAY ['path-to-file-1', 'path-to-file-2', 'path-to-file-3']
or
'{path-to-file-1,path-to-file-2,path-to-file-3,"path to file 4"}'
You need to use " here only for elements that contain space and so on. But you fill free to use it for all elements too.

Answer 2

You can create a file table that has a path column and a foreign key reference to the record that it belongs to. This way you can store the path as just a text column instead of storing an array in a column, which is better practice for relational databases. You'll also be able to store additional information on a file if you need to later. And it'll be more simple to interact with the file path records since you'd add a new file path by just inserting a new row into the file table (with the appropriate foreign key) and remove by deleting a row from the file table.
For example:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS file (
record_id integer NOT NULL REFERENCES records(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
path text NOT NULL
);
Then to get all the files for a record you can join the two tables together and convert to an array if you want.
For example:
SELECT
records.*,
ARRAY (
SELECT
file.path
FROM
file
WHERE
records.id = file.record_id
) AS file_paths
FROM
records;
Sample input (using only the title field of records):
INSERT INTO records (title) VALUES ('A'), ('B'), ('C');
INSERT INTO file (record_id, path) VALUES (1, 'patha1'), (1, 'patha2'), (1, 'patha3'), (2, 'pathb1');
Sample output:
id | title | file_paths
----+-------+------------------------
1 | A | {patha1,patha2,patha3}
2 | B | {pathb1}
3 | C | {}