There IS a limit to the size of a post!

[Farelf]

It seems that I have exceeded the maximum character count for an individual post. 

37544[/snapback]

So that's what the "Check post length" link is about, in the edit console. Seems like there's scope for some background and usage notes on this and other tools in the Forum FAQ.

So far you have used 588 characters

Do bells sound and lights flash if you do the check and the number is excessive? I swear I saw something about maximum post size somewhere once but can't find it at the moment.

[dbiel]

So that's what the "Check post length" link is about, in the edit console.  Seems like there's scope for some background and usage notes on this and other tools in the Forum FAQ. Do bells sound and lights flash if you do the check and the number is excessive?  I swear I saw something about maximum post size somewhere once but can't find it at the moment.

37558[/snapback]

No bells, no lights flashing.

My truncated post show "So far you have used 52,586 characters.

So I would say if you go over 50,000 characters you had better start making other plans or risk losing the last part of the post when you submit it.

[Farelf]

No bells, no lights flashing.

37562[/snapback]

So a worthwhile addition to the dialog pop-up title would be the character limit?

[dbiel]

So a worthwhile addition to the dialog pop-up title would be the character limit?

37566[/snapback]

A good idea, but I do not think it is possible. It is likely that the limit is varriable based on varrious factors such as group membership of author, the specific forum the post is locate, etc.

It would definately be helpful to know what those limits are to avoid learning the hard way which is what I did.

[Wazoo]

A good idea, but I do not think it is possible.  It is likely that the limit is varriable based on varrious factors such as group membership of author, the specific forum the post is locate, etc.

It would definately be helpful to know what those limits are to avoid learning the hard way which is what I did.

37568[/snapback]

Forum - General Configuration settings; Max. size of post (in kilobytes [kb]) 1000

This is what JT had set it to dating to way back when, perhaps thinking that folks would be posting e-mail/spam in total ...????

However, dipping into the MySQL stuff, describe ipb_posts defines the field "post" as Type "text" .... and looking elsewhere in the world for more input, I find the description of;

CHAR() A fixed section from 0 to 255 characters long.

VARCHAR() A variable section from 0 to 255 characters long.

TINYTEXT A string with a maximum length of 255 characters.

TEXT A string with a maximum length of 65535 characters.

BLOB A string with a maximum length of 65535 characters.

MEDIUMTEXT A string with a maximum length of 16777215 characters.

MEDIUMBLOB A string with a maximum length of 16777215 characters.

LONGTEXT A string with a maximum length of 4294967295 characters.

LONGBLOB A string with a maximum length of 4294967295 characters.

Which then led to a search on code, configuration settings .. then some experimentation ... turns out that the "default" setting in the IPB Admin Control Panel for the application is 100kb .... but even that's kind of "so what" based on the above list.

So it appears at this point that JT's setting bumped that up quite a bit, but the size he chose exceeds the MySQL limit on the "text" field assigment in the creation of the database ... and I can find no code that changes this field type/description based on simply changing this number in the ACP configuration screen, but changing it to a smaller number does get the Forum code to truncate at that smaller number (i.e. the setting of the max size to 1000kb seems like it 'should have' transformed this field into a "MediumText" format with a MySQL limit of 16.7Mb that would then be Forum-App truncated to 1Mb) .... then one has to somehow factor in the code stripping and rebuilding that goes on with the HTML / BBCode / HTML conversions that may play into the 'final' results of a character count .... I'd say that dbiel's inital guess would be a good number to work with, going with the apparent MySQL limit of 65k, getting worried at 50k seems sound <g>

Apologies for the time passed in a response, but though some would think that this should have been an "easy" answer, I'm learning things myself, and as seen above, had I simply gone with the "confguration" numbers and offered the 1Meg max answer, I would have been wrong.

[Wazoo]

And to being this back into view.... the 2.2.x version of this application has changed / converted the post content field to MEDIUM TEXT field. I would suspect/hope that most folks would tire at trying to post something over 16Meg of text. (Ignoring the other size limitations involved) ...

I suspect this is also the background for the removal of the "Check post size" button ....