VARCHAR max in laravel 5

Question

I have searched all over the web for a tutorial on varchar max. I have even tried

$table->string('name', "MAX");

This gives me an error.

How can I set up varchar max for a blog post for a laravel project. Thanks

there's no varchar(max) in MySQL: http://stackoverflow.com/q/332798/1331425 and I believe that Laravel have no support for that. — Limon Monte, Dec 18 '15 at 19:05
I hear text is depreciated though isn't it? I hear people saying we should use varchar max in order to put in a blog post... Is this not right? — JP Foster, Dec 18 '15 at 19:24

score 27 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 03 '21 at 03:25

27

There is no "max" constant for VARCHAR in MySQL. Instead you need to define the maximum value of the field yourself.

In order to define max length for a text field just provide max length limit as second parameter:

$table->string('name', 64);

It will result in a VARCHAR column being created in your MySQL database. Keep in mind that if max length is very high, a field of different type might be created instead (mediumtext, longtext).

edited Jun 03 '21 at 03:25

dylan-myers

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answered Dec 18 '15 at 19:09

jedrzej.kurylo

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I understand this. But online it shows that a blog post should be varchar(max). Since TEXT fields are depreciated. I am looking for a workaround. – JP Foster Dec 18 '15 at 19:23
max is just a placehoder for the max length value... If you do as I posted in the answer you'll get a column of type varchar(64) - check the database after migration is run – jedrzej.kurylo Dec 18 '15 at 20:19

score 16 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 05 '18 at 13:44

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Use text for varchar(max):

$table->text('name');

edited Jun 05 '18 at 13:44

Ryan Shripat

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answered Jun 05 '18 at 13:13

Augusto Russo

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For MS SQL Server, this is the correct answer - it maps to nvarchar(max). – Aaron Mason Sep 28 '21 at 04:56
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This creates 'text' type column in PostgreSQL. – sabvente Dec 02 '21 at 09:03
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For MySQL, this will results with TEXT type too – Ammar Sani May 16 '23 at 04:36

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered May 07 '18 at 06:06

So in Laravel you have to use a number of bytes instead of an automatic max. That max length in recent versions of MySQL is 65,535 bytes but the entire row needs to be smaller than that. So if this is the only long text field in the row, you should be fine just subtracting a little from the max and using that. If you're going to have several long text fields in one row you'll want to subtract the length of the other fields and then divide.

Assuming this is the only big text field in your blog field you'd probably be fine just doing:

$table->string('name', 60000);

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 31 '18 at 14:31

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In app/Auth/Providers set the file AppServiceProvider.php like:

use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

and in boot function:

Schema::defaultStringLength(191);

answered Dec 31 '18 at 14:31

gjerich

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score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 24 '19 at 08:10

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because this is a varchar type in mysql or mariadb or ... . VARCHAR supports the maximum size at 65535 characters.

$table->string('name', "65535");

answered Oct 24 '19 at 08:10

mohammadreza gohari

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VARCHAR max in laravel 5

5 Answers5