MEDIUMTEXT

Syntax

MEDIUMTEXT [CHARACTER SET charset_name] [COLLATE collation_name]

Description

A TEXT column with a maximum length of 16,777,215 (224 - 1) characters. The effective maximum length is less if the value contains multi-byte characters. Each MEDIUMTEXT value is stored using a three-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.

SYNONYMS

The following are synonyms for MEDIUMTEXT:

• LONG
• LONG CHAR VARYING
• LONG CHARACTER VARYING
• LONG VARCHAR
• LONG VARCHARACTER

EXAMPLES

MEDIUMTEXT

Example of MEDIUMTEXT:

CREATE TABLE mediumtext_example (
   description VARCHAR(20),
   example MEDIUMTEXT
) DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1; -- One byte per char makes the examples clearer

INSERT INTO mediumtext_example VALUES
   ('Normal foo', 'foo'),
   ('Trailing spaces foo', 'foo      '),
   ('NULLed', NULL),
   ('Empty', ''),
   ('Maximum', RPAD('', 16777215, 'x'));

SELECT description, LENGTH(example) AS length
   FROM mediumtext_example;

+---------------------+----------+
| description         | length   |
+---------------------+----------+
| Normal foo          |        3 |
| Trailing spaces foo |        9 |
| NULLed              |     NULL |
| Empty               |        0 |
| Maximum             | 16777215 |
+---------------------+----------+

Data Too Long

When SQL_MODE is strict (the default) a value is considered "too long" when its length exceeds the size of the data type, and an error is generated.

Example of data too long behavior for MEDIUMTEXT:

TRUNCATE mediumtext_example;

INSERT INTO mediumtext_example VALUES
   ('Overflow', RPAD('', 16777216, 'x'));

ERROR 1406 (22001): Data too long for column 'example' at row 1

See Also

• TEXT
• BLOB and TEXT Data Types
• Data Type Storage Requirements