I need to store a url in a MySQL table. What's the best practice for defining a field that will hold a URL with an undetermined length?
+9
A:
VARCHAR(512) (or similar) should be sufficient. However, since you don't really know the maximum length of the URLs in question, I might just go direct to TEXT. The danger with this is of course loss of efficiency due to CLOBs being far slower than a simple string datatype like VARCHAR.
Daniel Spiewak
2008-10-20 19:31:31
The answer below is sooo much better.
ftrotter
2010-08-04 00:40:21
+3
A:
varchar(max) for SQLServer2005
varchar(65535) for MySQL 5.0.3 and later
This will allocate storage as need and shouldn't affect performance.
TrickyNixon
2008-10-20 19:31:43
In your snippet, is `max` a magic ANSI SQL specifier to grow the VARCHAR size as necessary, or is it just a meta-variable for the sake of example?
Daniel Spiewak
2008-10-20 19:33:51
In MySQL you most likely can't have a varchar that large unless it is the only column in the table.
carson
2008-10-20 19:41:34
+1
A:
Most browsers will let you put very large amounts of data in a URL and thus lots of things end up creating very large URLs so if you are talking about anything more than the domain part of a URL you will need to use a TEXT column since the VARCHAR/CHAR are limited.
carson
2008-10-20 19:33:44
+1
A:
I don't know about other browsers, but IE7 has a 2083 character limit for HTTP GET operations. Unless any other browsers have lower limits, I don't see why you'd need any more characters than 2083.
matt b
2008-10-20 19:33:54
A:
Most web servers have a URL length limit (which is why there is an error code for "URI too long"), meaning there is a practical upper size. Find the default length limit for the most popular web servers, and use the largest of them as the field's maximum size; it should be more than enough.
CesarB
2008-10-20 19:50:11
+31
A:
Lowest common denominator max URL length among popular web browsers: 2,083 (Internet Explorer)
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/char.html
Values in VARCHAR columns are variable-length strings. The length can be specified as a value from 0 to 255 before MySQL 5.0.3, and 0 to 65,535 in 5.0.3 and later versions. The effective maximum length of a VARCHAR in MySQL 5.0.3 and later is subject to the maximum row size (65,535 bytes, which is shared among all columns) and the character set used.So ...
< MySQL 5.0.3 use TEXT
or
>= MySQL 5.0.3 use VARCHAR(2083)
micahwittman
2008-10-20 19:55:27
Good answer, but personaly I would limit the length. Depending on the project you might want to limit the accepted urls. Who uses url longet than 200?
John
2010-08-20 12:00:31
+1
A:
See the below URL for the size limits of the popular browsers and web servers. http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/misc/urllength.html
A:
Hello, I created a MYSQL table and stored a hyperlink in the 'url' field in my table. Would you please explain to me:- how can display the hyperlink in a web form when it's connected to the 'url' field in my table.
For example: If url: http://www.w3schools.com, how can I show the hyperlink as well as go to that the website when the user clicks the url?
I use Dreamweaver CS4, PHP and MYSQL Database to display the web form.
Thank you very much for the help.
ja
2010-02-27 01:01:44
Answers should not be questions. Either add a comment or start your own question.
Jimmy Cuadra
2010-02-27 01:51:34