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Answered Only 191 of 255 characters are saved in description field

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    Waivor Reply #1, 5 years, 9 months ago
    I don't know why but when I type in more than 191 characters in the description field of any resource Modx 2.6.4 / 2.6.5 only saves the first 191 characters. What's the reasoning behind this when the system says that 255 are allowed?

    This question has been answered by BobRay. See the first response.

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      BobRay Reply #2, 5 years, 9 months ago
      255 is not the number of characters you can store. It's the number of bytes allocated for that field (minus a null byte and sometimes bytes for indexing).

      Is your character set utf8mb4? That would explain it.

      If so, changing to utf8 would fix it, but so would just changing the field in the DB to a larger VARCHAR. It doesn't hurt to go up in size, though going down can truncate your data.

      On the SSQL tab after selecting the DB in PhpMyAdmin:

      ALTER TABLE modx_site_content MODIFY description VARCHAR(some bigger number)
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        Waivor Reply #3, 5 years, 9 months ago
        Quote from: BobRay at Jul 16, 2018, 09:08 PM
        255 is not the number of characters you can store. It's the number of bytes allocated for that field (minus a null byte and sometimes bytes for indexing).

        Is your character set utf8mb4? That would explain it.

        If so, changing to utf8 would fix it, but so would just changing the field in the DB to a larger VARCHAR. It doesn't hurt to go up in size, though going down can truncate your data.

        On the SSQL tab after selecting the DB in PhpMyAdmin:

        ALTER TABLE modx_site_content MODIFY description VARCHAR(some bigger number)

        Thanks, BobRay. That explains everything.
        • Jako Reply #4, 5 years, 9 months ago
          Bob, you are somehow wrong. The field length was reduced to 191 chars to have no errors during indexing with utf8mb charset. So there is a reduction and the field description string is wrong.
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            BobRay Reply #5, 5 years, 9 months ago
            Thanks Jako! I stand corrected.

            But wasn't the OP getting the VARCHAR length from the DB?

            In MODX 2.6.3, the DB says varchar(255) for the description field.

            FWIW, in MODX3 the description field type is 'text' so there's no length.

            Are you saying that MODX truncates it to 191 before saving? In that case, suggesting ALTER TABLE was definitely wrong.
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            • Jako Reply #6, 5 years, 9 months ago
              If it is text now, everything is fine for that field. There are some database fields truncated from VARCHAR(255) to VARCHAR(191) in the DB (maybe only in the models) in 2.6.x. because of a possible utf8mb index on that field. If it is only in the model, the field is truncated before save by MODX.
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                Erhard Reply #7, 5 years, 8 months ago
                I have the same problem with installing MODX 2.6.5. I transferred the content via Gitifyfrom an older website. In the new db the varchar(255) are only varchar(191). I have now manually changed the lengths to 255 and watch what happens. First impression: nothing bad.
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