What data-type should I use to store an article?
The article could be from 1 to 20 pages. (Probably not bigger, but you never know?!)
I want to store both content and the associated HTML, so I can just echo it in PHP and have it appear as it does currently in the static version.
Suggestions?
Debbie
use TEXT
By my calculation that is about 18 pages.
What if I need more?
Can I safely use MediumText??
And what is the difference between the Blobs and Texts??
Debbie
if you wish
TEXT can hold up to 65k, MEDIUMTEXT up to 16m
[quote=“r937,post:4,topic:88894”]
if you wish
TEXT can hold up to 65k, MEDIUMTEXT up to 16m[/quote]
Any performance hits using MediumText?
[Quote=DoubleDee]
And what is the difference between the Blobs and Texts??
Originally Posted by da manual
BLOB columns are treated as binary strings (byte strings). TEXT columns are treated as non-binary strings (character strings). BLOB columns have no character set, and sorting and comparison is based on the numeric values of the bytes in column values. TEXT columns have a character set, and values are sorted and compared based on the collation of the character set assigned to the column as of MySQL 4.1.
What exactly is a “binary string”?
What is a “non-binary string”?
Why would you use a BLOB?
Debbie
come on, debbie, i know it’s real easy just to throw these questions out to sitepoint, your favourite free support team, but seriously, how hard are you trying to find out this stuff on your own?
i mean, really
may i recommend (1) da manual, (2) wikipedia, and (3) google
if those don’t help, feel free to come back
No need to be indignant.
I ask questions just like I am chatting or talking face-to-face.
If I wanted to spend all day Googling I’d never come here.
I ask because I’m unclear about things or want to hear something explained in someone else’s own words.
I’ve never really understood binary strings and blobs. (Everything on a computer is a series of 1’s and 0’s?!)
Debbie
P.S. Anyone who feels burdened being “Debbie’s Free Support” certainly doesn’t have to talk to me…
I read this from IBM and I’m still not really sure what they are saying… (Heaven forbid I don’t get everything?!)
I understand binary, and I thought everything on a computer was some sort of a “binary string”?!
An ASCII character is a “string of 1’s and 0’s” (or a “string of hexadecimal characters”).
Debbie
The MySQL manual is at mysql.com
That’s the IBM DB2 manual, a different piece of software
MySQL :: MySQL 5.1 Reference Manual :: 10.4.3 The BLOB and TEXT Types
But the term “binary string” and “BLOB” are basically platform independent, and I’ve never had a solid understanding of those terms, so I don’t think I’m being as lazy as r937 seems to think…
Debbie
BLOB is a bunch of 1s and 0s
TEXT is a bunch of 1s and 0s along with some info saying how to interpret those 1s and 0s as text
110101001010010101100101 does not mean the same thing when interpreted as an MP3 file versus text, and does not mean the same characters when interpreted as UTF-8 text vs ISO-8859-8 text.
With some TEXT, you can do things like search inside that column for a word or phrase. With a BLOB you can’t do that, since the database won’t know how to tell if that word or phrase appears in the data, it may or may not depending on how it’s interpreted.
And those “interpretations” are “character sets”?
Debbie
Yes. Character sets are the instructions for how to encode and decode between binary data and printable characters for display.
Is BLOB a free-for-all, or does it have a set character set?
If I chose a data-type of BLOB (versus MediumText) then what would happen to my article text?
Would it get garbled up?
Make a hit MP3?
Or something else?!
Thanks,
Debbie
I think this thread has answered those questions more than once now, just think it over