Magento – How to increase character limit of text field in Magento 2

magento-2.1.9product-attribute

I have one attribute named "Features". Values for this attribute are coming from Lightspeed pos and input type for this attribute is a text field. Light speed doesn't provide a text area for this attribute.

I want to increase the character limit for this field in the admin. Right now the limit is 255 chars. So, how can I increase this limit?

Best Answer

Unfortunately your attribute seams to be of type varchar and here you have a database restriction to 255 characters in for the value field of type varchar in the corresponding eav table catalog_product_entity_varchar.

You need an attribute of type text in order to store more data since then you will have a value field of type text with a restriction of 65,535 bytes in the corresponding eav table catalog_product_entity_text.

Now that's theory. Unfortunately Magento does not support the change of attribute type for good reason. Although there is a way doing that by database changes for varchar to text, I don't recommend that here - although for good reason :-)

I would suggest the following:

Create a new attribute "features2" of type text
Export the features for all existing products
Import the data for all existing products into the new created attribute
Rename the attributes so that the new created attribute will be named "features" (you may also delete the old attribute after that)

Of course you should test that approach in a test / stage environment before applying the changes in production.

Related Solutions

Maximum Limit for Product Attribute Value in Magento 1.9

The text attributes are stores in the table catalog_product_entity_text. Their values are stores in the value column that is of type text.
You can see here the max lengths allowed for all column types.

This is what's important to you:

BLOB, TEXT               L + 2 bytes, where L < 2^16   (64 Kilobytes)

You can also use long text for an attribute, but this is more complicated. You would have to create a table similar to catalog_product_entity_text but with the column value having the type LONGTEXT.

THe max storage for this is (from the same source)

LONGBLOB, LONGTEXT       L + 4 bytes, where L < 2^32

But you will also have to search through the code to see where you need to tell magento to consider your new table. I have no idea what this will take.

I suggest using the TEXT attribute. It should be enough storage. If you plan to keep more than 64k in one column you might need to rethink your architecture.

Magento – Change Attribute Backend Type from Varchar to Text

If you change the backend_type Magento will also change the EAV table.

It will use catalog_product_entity_text instead of catalog_product_entity_varchar.

You will have to move all the records for that attribute to the new table. If you do not do this operation you may create orphans records and db inconsistencies.

You may try with an insert from select. Best if you write down a small PHP script.

WARNING: Make a full DB backup before you try this.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Maximum Limit for Product Attribute Value in Magento 1.9

Magento – Change Attribute Backend Type from Varchar to Text

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