[Solved] Story texts and SQL modifying?

What is the number in parentheses after VARCHAR?  That's usually the number of characters allowed in the field.  So a VARCHAR(255) would have a limit of 255 characters.

I, for one, use MEDIUMTEXT, which has a limit of roughly 16 million characters.  (The next lower one, TINYTEXT, is about 65,000, which was a little small to me)

Which works great, but then I start hitting other problems, like script timeouts (the script takes too long and hits a php time limit), size limits (the php POST size -- how much data PHP is transferring to MySQL -- is too small) and MYSQL crashes.  I've found an effective limit of about 100,000 words (give or take) for each chapter (remember, everything counts as characters, including HTML and formatting codes) given everything I can change.  Depending on your host and settings, your mileage will vary.

NULL (Yes/No) column simply tells MYSQL if a field can be empty ("Null") or not.  If you try and insert data and a NULL/NO field is empty, MySQL will return an error (which eFiction may or may not pass on to you).  A "null'" in the DEFAULT column means that if a new record is created, unless otherwise specified, this is what is inserted into the field (in the null case, it is blank).  I would leave these alone, as you mainly want to control things from the eFiction side.

I hope this helps explains some things you were wondering about and helps in your decision on what to do.  I would mainly suggest changing the storytext field type to MEDIUMTEXT and not using VARCHAR().

Hi, thanks for all the information. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer with all of this.

There isn't a number in parentheses besides VARCHAR. The column beside of it is Length Values and that box is blank. Not sure if you meant actually in the "type" box or the box beside it. Actually, all of the boxes are empty except "Type" and "Null". Does that mean anything?

So if I change it to MEDIUMTEXT, will the time outs and crashes occur more than likely? Or were you referring to the TINYTEXT? With all the issues I had with my SQL last week I'm beyond worried about even entering it, much less making changes, but if this will fix the posting issues then I'm more than willing to do it.

On a side note, I went in and added my longest chapter last night. Almost 11,000 words, and it posted just fine. Could a timeout be the reason behind this too and if so, is there anything I can do to change this or just tell my members to be speedy when uploading? lol

I will leave the "Null" column well alone. I just wasn't sure if that meant something from the other post. Thanks for explaining that to me as well.

I really appreciate all the help.

I noticed you said that cURL is on. cURL is notorious for cutting off chapter text when it finds certain words present (which varies by server). So it's possible it's that, if you've managed to post an even longer story than ones that are getting cut off. https://efiction.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Server_Errors_and_CURL (also http://dracoandginny.com/support/knowledgebase.php?article=18)

MySQL 5.0.3 and higher supports up to 65,535 characters with VARCHAR() - this includes the version you're at. However, the install script says that it's supposed to be set to TEXT, so if you're going to change it to anything I'd try that first. (MEDIUMTEXT is one of the TEXT types.)

I decided to change VARCHAR to MEDIUMTEXT. When I changed it in the drop down menu to say MEDIUMTEXT or even just TEXT and hit save, it gave me a pop up message that said "Missing Value in the form". Obviously there is something else I'm supposed to be adding. Would I need to manually add something into the 'Length Values' box? Or is this something else? And what exactly would I need to put there? Am I manually telling it how many characters/words to set?

Also, is there a downfall for asking my host to disable cURL? It obviously serves some sort of purpose, and if this doesn't work and I try decide to have them disable it, are there any issues that come with that?

Thank you all so much for your help. I'm learning, slowly, but I want to make sure I have this site running at it's maximum potential, especially since we seem to be growing rather quickly. 

Hard to say. Can you screenshot it?

Here's the SS of what I am looking at. It doesn't show the rest of the right side, but I can take another if you need to see that info. Just let me know.
Just something I thought I'd bring up. A friend of mine said something about an Apache server bug and cURL. Do you know of this and if it might be related. I contacted my host and they said that they can't apply the code she referred to. I know nothing about it and thought I'd ask.

Hopefully this will help.

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me.

Well, for one thing, the field name is missing. : )

Without knowing more about what your friend said, I have no idea if it could be the cause.

Oh, maybe that's why. Um,  😀 what would the field name be? I feel like this should be obvious. lol

Thanks!

Whatever the one you're modifying is called - storytext, right?

Based on the screenshot, it looks like you are adding a new field, and not modifying an existing field.

Click the structure tab, find the line with storytest in the field, then go across and look for an EDIT or CHANGE option.  Clicking on this should show the form with all the existing information already filled in.  You can then change the dropdown box TYPE to MEDIUMTEXT (and delete the number in the length field, if any, or else get an error!!) and see if that helps your chapters cutting off.

(Your layout will vary based on the version of phpMyAdmin)

Another note, the next field LENGTH (when you are adding or editing a field) is for using if you need it.  For example, if setting VARCHAR(200), the field drop down would be set to VARCHAR, and then the length field would have 200 in it.  For fields without a (), like MEDIUMTEXT, the Length portion would be left empty.

One last note:  If this is happening more with one or two stories, and not as a whole, I've found that sometimes I've accidentally used a < or > in a story (or other odd character, or a bad html code) that causes problems.  You may want to examine the raw html at the point where the chapter cuts off to see if anything other than A-Z, a-z, 0-9 is going on.  This is especially easy when copying from Word or other word processing program.

And about that script timeout -- there is nothing you or your users can do to change the amount of time the script takes to upload the story.  If you are running up against that particular problem, you can only change the limit (in php.ini, if you are allowed to change it) or stay under it.

And, um, cUrl.  The problem is not so much turning it off and on for you specifically, it's that if your host does not use it, the word itself is typically banned (to prevent hacking attempts and such).  And they won't change that for just one person.

😀 I posted a chapter last night, which was at 14,000 words. It cut it off. I changed it from the structure console and posted again, it is now showing the whole chapter.

thank you Lyndsie and hobert for your amazing advice. It seems to be working so far. I've only tested the one chapter, but it's the longest one I have. I'm going to send out emails to everyone that had issues and have them repost, just to make sure it works on their end, but if it worked with mine, I'm sure it'll work on theirs as well. (fingers crossed)

Again, thank you so much, and hopefully this will be the end of this problem.

Just because I am insanely curious, what was the value in VARCHAR() before you changed it?

There wasn't a value listed. Everything was blank.

I'm curious how it got set to varchar to begin with. The storytext field at install is a text field.